On Wednesday, October 5, shootings in Cupertino caused the school to enter an “indoor recess,” whereby all outdoor activities ceased and students and faculty heeded intensified measures.

According to several news sources, around 4:30 a.m., a worker at Lehigh Southwest Cement Permanente Plant opened fire on his colleagues and then drove away. He had entered a safety meeting and began shooting. At about 7:30, the same man allegedly attempted to carjack a woman near Hewlett-Packard’s Cupertino campus, shooting her in the arm.
Dispatcher 45 from the Santa Clara County Office of the Sheriff said the shooter is still loose and considered by the police to be “armed and dangerous.” He is suspected to be near the border of Sunnyvale and Cupertino, as of 3:53 p.m.

As part of the additional precautions, students and faculty were advised to remain indoors when possible, and the schedule was adjusted so that students could be monitored and still attend class.
Head of School Chris Nikoloff recommended following advice and instructions given by local authorities and urged parents and students to “try not to panic or worry.”

Lunch was divided into two blocks and confined in closed locations. During the first, juniors and seniors ate in Manzanita Hall while freshmen and sophomores remained in the Gym; during the second, their locations were reversed. All lunchtime activities and clubs were canceled.

In place of the Eagle Buddies session, sophomores joined juniors and seniors for their L.I.F.E. session. All other afternoon events of the school day followed the original schedule.
Extra Help was canceled, and the Upper School community reassembled in the Gym, where Head of Upper School Butch Keller said to remain alert and continue to “act as maturely as we have up to this point.”

Volleyball practice, weight room use, Capoeira class, and all outdoors sports practices were cancelled for the day; the Eagle Buddies session has been rescheduled for another date.

Both Keller and Assistant Head of Upper School Greg Lawson praised the students for their flexibility and cooperation.

“Given the fact that we’ve never really rehearsed for what I would call a proximity situation, I thought we performed remarkably,” Lawson said. “The amount of communication that took place between our offset communications, the administration of this school on all the three campuses, the athletic directors, the teachers, the students at last minute, the transportation and security dept was remarkable.

Some students were touched more directly by the shooting. Daphne Millard’s father, Robert Millard, a member of the San Jose Police Department, has been on duty since early in the morning, she said. She is worried about the safety of her father and believes that with the victim at-large, the community suffers injustice, whether they were directly related to the shooting or not.

Lawson said, “The triumph of the day was that on every campus, every child went to every class that they were scheduled to have.”

As of publication, tomorrow will proceed on a regular Thursday schedule.