He is one of four told to leave Santana High

March 15, 2001

SANTEE -- Tamara Von Mauw has a question for the Grossmont Union High School District about her son -- one of four students told to attend another school after the deadly shooting at Santana last week.

"How can you ensure the safety of 2,000 children, but you can't ensure the safety of my son?" she asked. "(The district) picked out my child and persecuted him."

Grossmont Superintendent Granger Ward said four students were told last week that they would not be returning to the 1,900-student Santana High School campus. He said the ban was not to punish the students but to protect them because students were angry and grieving when school resumed March 7.

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The four students have been quoted in the media as saying that although they heard Charles "Andy" Williams talk about bringing a gun to school, they didn't believe him. Because they thought he was joking, they did not alert school authorities.

Shortly before his first class that Monday, Williams, a 15-year-old freshman, fatally shot two students and wounded 13 other people, prosecutors say.

Von Mauw said at least 20 students knew of Williams' threats and did nothing. Still, school officials aren't transferring them.

"Everybody is convicting my son and he didn't do anything," she said. "I want an apology from the school or a phone call or something."

Von Mauw said her son, A.J. Gilbert, a 15-year-old sophomore, was with Williams the morning of the shooting because Williams had left his bike and sweat shirt at their home two days earlier, on March 3. On March 5, she told her son to ride the bike to Williams' apartment to return it.

A.J.'s 19-year-old sister, Sierra Libby, said her brother told her that Andy asked him for a cigarette. Then "Andy mentioned, 'This is my last cigarette,' " she said.

She said her brother told her he thought Andy was joking with him and A.J. responded by jokingly patting him down.

Steve Gilbert, A.J.'s father, said that if his son truly thought Williams had a gun, the teen-ager wouldn't have gone to school.

The family found out March 6 that A.J. would not be allowed to attend Santana but would go to another school in the district. Von Mauw said she saw televised reports that four students were being barred from classes and she figured one of them was her son.

She then called Santana to find out what was going on.

"I was left on hold for 10 minutes. They had some flunky kid set up an appointment for A.J. to go to another school without asking me. They told me to be there at a certain time."

Vanessa Willis, 15, a neighbor of Williams, also has said she wasn't allowed to return to school, and relatives said Williams' friends Joshua Stevens and Neil O'Grady, both 15-year-old freshmen, were banned from classes.

After the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, friends of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were asked if they wanted to be home-schooled rather than return to campus, said Rick Kaufman, communications director at Jefferson County Schools.

"We did it both for safety concerns, and we did not want to heighten the anxiety levels of the general school population," Kaufman said yesterday. "It was something we wrestled with. We weren't going to force anyone, but we felt it was the most prudent course."

In California, there is no state law that guarantees the right of a student to attend the neighborhood school, said Jose Gonzales, assistant general counsel for San Diego city schools. A student must be allowed to attend a school in his home district, though, and he cannot be sent to an alternative education program without a parent's consent, Gonzales said.

Grossmont Union spokesman Mark Pettis said three of the parents agreed to have their students attend another program.

"I can't share the discussion with the fourth," he said.

District officials are not ruling out the possibility that the students could return to Santana in the fall, Pettis said.

The students have all been placed in other programs, but Pettis would neither identify the students nor disclose where they are assigned. There are 10 other comprehensive high schools in the district. Chaparral High School, a continuation school, and the Phoenix program, in which students can work independently at home, are also part of the district.

Vanessa has said she would complete her studies this year in the Phoenix program.

"People are very angry right now, and you never know what people might do," Courtney Seals, a 15-year-old sophomore at Santana and friend of Williams, said when the news of the reassignments was announced.

But Becky Lang, the mother of 16-year-old Santana junior Rusti Lang, said she has been on campus every day since the shooting.

"I'm sensing overall that the student body at large isn't holding anything against them," Lang said.