Gina Amodeo shouted "Pancake!" and her second-grade students knew exactly what to do. They immediately dropped to the floor and flattened out, minimizing the chance of getting shot.
It was only a drill, but they've been doing the real thing far too often lately. With a recent surge of violence in the vicinity of Monte Vista Elementary School in Highland Park, the students are terrified.
"We don't want to get hurt," one of Amodeo's students told me after the Friday morning drill, smiling innocently.
I wish I had known what to tell him and his buddy, who both looked at me as if an adult ought to have an answer for this kind of madness. I told them they were safe in their classroom, and they nodded but didn't seem particularly reassured.
Amodeo had invited me to campus to see what these kids are up against, and I sat with her in the principal's office for a while as we took turns saying how tragic and unacceptable it is. Principal Jose Posada, a Marine in the first Gulf War, said he didn't see as much action in Iraq as there's been in the neighborhood in recent weeks. "We're caught in the middle of it," he said of violence that may involve competing Highland Park gangs.
Jeff Carr, the mayor's gang reduction leader, acknowledged that there's been a recent uptick in gang violence after a long lull in the area. But he said there's no strong evidence that there's all-out raging war underway among the region's notorious gangs.
Still, he understands the fear that students, parents and educators feel, and he said police and other agencies are responding to their concerns.
As Posada puts it, though, when you hear gunshots, sirens and helicopters so routinely, it's hard to take comfort in official reassurances. Reality doesn't seem to jibe, he suggested, with the line from City Hall.
Last Monday morning, Posada said, students were on their way to school when a shooting broke out at the corner where Monte Vista is located. "It was six to eight shots," said Posada, who ran in the direction of the shooting to check on his students.
Posada saw one gunman fleeing down an alley across the street from the school. He said parents and between 30 and 40 elementary school students had hit the ground while the bullets flew between two gunmen. Police arrived within a minute, he said, but the shooters were long gone.
It was chilling, Posada said, a brazen shootout in broad daylight with children so near the line of fire.
