Buss: More accountability would help Oxford parents heal
Kaitlyn BussCraig Shilling, the father of 17-year-old Justin Shilling, who died in the November 2021 Oxford High School shooting, is not done fighting for the whole truth about what happened or helping push policies in Michigan that might prevent future attacks.
“We want full accountability and transparency,” Shilling says of Oxford schools. “The healing process would have been 100% different had they been forthcoming.”
State law is not adequate to force schools to be open about their school safety plans and to hold staff and administration accountable when kids are not kept safe. Such requirements could have helped alleviate some of the pain of dealing with the death of his son, Schilling says.
Resolutions being introduced to the State Board of Education Tuesday by Trustee Nikki Snyder, R-Dexter, suggest changes to the law that would, among other things, require districts to fully inform parents their crisis preparedness measures, specifically emergency operations plans (EOPs).
The proposals would also demand more accountability from schools and personnel when proper procedures are not executed — including stripping away governmental immunity that has protected those in Oxford.
“The fact that governmental immunity exists the way it does in Michigan is a detriment to getting to the truth,” says Steve St. Juliana, whose 14-year-old daughter, Hana, died in the shooting. “That’s where we are asking to start. We want to know what was going on at the school, and leading up to the incident.
The resolutions call for a repeal of the blanket exemption on emergency operation plans from the Freedom of Information Act and the Open Meetings Act, including each time it is updated to comply with federal law. Governmental immunity would apply only if proper implementation of the EOP is carried out, defining “gross negligence” as failure to implement the EOP laws.
The intent is not punitive; it’s preventative.
“The fact that there are laws out there that don’t have repercussions — it’s hard to take it all in,” Shilling says. “The reins should be grabbed by higher up authorities. We need to make the right determinations right from the start.”
Kids’ safety at school must be paramount. Ensuring that means strengthening the law to demand information about what schools are doing to prevent and mitigate harm.
Despite the existence of an EOP at Oxford High School before the shooting, elements of the response to the crisis and the threat assessment were not executed properly, as the October 2023 Guidepost Solutions investigation, reluctantly sought by the Oxford school officials six months after the shooting, found.
With patchwork enforcement and limited school safety resources, it’s likely there are similar vulnerabilities in other districts.
“That no cabinet-level administrator accepted responsibility for ensuring that the district's threat assessment policy was being implemented correctly is a serious breakdown,” the report says, one of many similar findings.
The district's attorneys advised Oxford employees, including critical witnesses, not to speak with Guidepost, and union attorneys advised members to decline participation.
That and guidance from the district’s insurance company has stymied attempts to get to the bottom of how the shooter slipped through the cracks not just at home, but also at school, and how the risk assessment process can improve.
Snyder is hoping the resolutions can gain traction for strengthening transparency and accountability in the law to handle shootings as well as other safety risks in schools.
Attorney General Dana Nessel will not pursue a civil or criminal investigation into Oxford, something the families of victims requested in March. Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald’s office recently said it would not pursue criminal charges against any school employees.
“Nobody has acknowledged they did anything wrong at Oxford schools,” St. Juliana says. “But when you can’t FOIA the EOP and you didn’t know the plan before — you can’t show where you went wrong.
“We need the right people to do the analysis,” he says, “and drive the changes that are necessary.”