Oxford High School shooting: Meetings allow parents to question safety report

OXFORD, Mich. (FOX 2) - Meetings Thursday gave Oxford Community School District parents the chance to ask questions about a recently released safety report.

Guidepost Solutions conducted an independent review of safety and policies in place after the November 2021 Oxford High School shooting. The report addresses current school safety and security policies and practices, not policies in place during the deadly school shooting.

Guidepost is expected to release another report that addresses what happened during and after the shooting later.

"The same words came to mind that came to me immediately after the shooting. We’re still left hoping for some accountability, lack of trust, transparency, a need for oversight," said Lori Bourgeu, with Change4Oxford.

Guidepost said that while Oxford's current threat and suicide assessment and physical security policies are up to par and in some ways robust, there are changes that can be made to improve them.

"The thing about threat assessment, it should be a proactive and not just a reactive thing.," Bourgeu said.

According to Bradley Dizik, with Guidepost, Oxford High School's security measures "surpass those of schools across the United States," but he noted that they aren't perfect.

During Thursday's meetings, one parent asked why some threats are not being communicated to parents.

"We’re doing 300% more threat assessments than any district that's comparable to us in terms of size. Thank God there aren’t 20 districts comparable to us in terms of the tragedy we’ve suffered," Superintendent Dr. Vickie L. Markavitch said. "Some of the threats reported are truly not threats at all."

The superintendent said she didn’t know of a plausible threat that wasn’t communicated to parents in the time she’d been there.

Guidepost expressed concerns that the number of threat assessments the district is taking on may not be sustainable.