The ever-changing reality of school safety in Ann Arbor

RIDHIMA KODALI EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Content Warning: This article contains mention of gun violence, mental health and abuse

Ann Arbor Public Schools closed down, due to reports of potential social media threats on Dec. 3, 2021, following the Oxford High School shooting.

Nearly a year later, on Nov. 29, Pioneer High School closed due to developing reports of threats made on social media.

Ten days later, on Dec. 9, Huron High School conducted a lock-out, due to threats made on social media. Both threats made at the schools were deemed to be not credible.

On Feb. 7, 2023, law enforcement and schools across Michigan received hoax calls, including Huron.

“Safety has changed tremendously, just like everyday life,” Executive Director of school safety and district operations Liz Margolis said. “Social media has taken a life and moved us into a different air of threats. A lot of students think they can say things and make things anonymously, and I can pretty much tell you that’s not working in law enforcement can determine where they’re originated from.”

The threats were deemed as not credible, though multiple schools went under lockdown.

“The number of threats that have come into this district already in this school year is more than we advocate in a full school year,” Margolis said, prior to the hoax calls Huron received. We take every single one of them very seriously and work very closely [with AAPD].”

Social Media is a culture that Margolis doesn’t see going away.

“Social media has put in just a whole level of management for schools.”

In Margolis’ 18 years of working for AAPS, schools were never closed for a direct threat until Pioneer closed on Nov. 29.

“It causes a massive disruption for our students, our community, our staff,” Margolis said. “When we make that decision, working with law enforcement, we’re making that decision just out of pure safety. We will not say ‘oh, we think it’s okay to open,’ and we will never respond that way. I actually want students to understand is any threats made even if it was just joking will be taken extremely seriously and we will follow it out till the end.”

Schools have been going under lockdown and students are being sent home due to these non-credible threats. However, there have been 39 mass shootings in the US, as of Jan. 23, per CNN.

Ed week reported there have been six school shootings this year, and 51 school shootings with in-

SAY GOODBYE TO STRESSFUL MORNINGS, SAY HELLO TO MY STOP

ANJALI NADARAJAH COPY EDITOR

Maybe it’s icy roads or a change in route, but everyone wants to know if their bus will be on time. One new app can help make solving the lack of accessible bus information for both parents and students easier.

Ann Arbor Public Schools implemented “Versatrans My Stop” on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. It’s a mobile and desktop app providing access to all bus information, whether it be the stop location or the bus’ estimated arrival time. It’s available free on the app store, Apple or Android.

According to AAPS, 94 percent of family users were satisfied with “My Stop.”

Freshman Celia Brown rides the bus everyday.

After downloading “My Stop,” her schedule has been much easier to handle.

“I really like My Stop because it makes getting ready in the morning a lot easier,” she said. “I like knowing if there’s going to be a de- juries or death in 2022. In addition, gun violence is now the number one cause of death among children in the United States, according to “The New York Times.”

“It’s sad, but it’s not surprising,” senior Daija Rankin said. “Our governments are really loose and there’s so much access to guns and the laws suck. Then our mental health services are terrible.”

But on Jan. 10, 2023, the state of Illinois signed assault weapons ban into law, per Gover JB Pritzker. This legislation bans weapons, protecting Illinois from the threat of gun violence.

When it comes to potential threats made at Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) the district leadership has implemented several safety measures. These measures involve staff training, working with law enforcement, monitoring student emails and searches through security software, “Securely. ” This is a precautionary measure taken to identify any foreseeable threats.

“We are a district that really relies on practices, protocols and common sense,” Margolis said. “We are not a district that relies on the hardening of our schools. We are trying to work within the culture of our community. But also, with lots of training and practice, with our students and most importantly with our staff, just trying to put in common sense safety measures.”

Margolis receives three to five Securely notices per day.

“It really helps us to monitor student mental health,” Margolis said. “We’ll see what students are searching and we will have counselors from in the building get with those students immediately.”

The district will know in a short period of time if students are making threats online or making certain searches.

If a student expresses harm to themselves or others, AAPS will place students through a threat assessment process and use a new RAPTOR platform. A lot of information that the lay and what time I need to be out the door by.”

To log in, type your student ID number for the username. Passwords are the same for all students in each family, and can be found in an email sent out from Huron Announce.

You can also contact Liz Margolis at margolisl@aaps.k12.mi.us, Laura Hayman at lhayman@ durhamschoolservices.com or Ashanda King at asking@durhamschoolservices. com for further questions.

Trailblazing Ann Arbor Resident becomes the Wordle editor at “The New York Times”

SATVIKA RAMANATHAN WEBSITE MANAGING EDITOR

Wordle editor

Tracy Bennett has always loved puzzles. It started with jigsaw puzzles when she was a little kid, and then she discovered word puzzles. She was accidentally introduced to the Sunday crossword in “The New York Times” when she was around 16, and the rest is history.

“The Sunday puzzle was when I first realized that puzzles could be not just a game of guessing or crossing answers, but also have a story or funny wordplay,” Bennett said. “There’s some other level that can make the experience even more pleasurable.”

Bennett, who majored in English Literature, has been in Ann Arbor since 1983 when she attended University of Michigan.

“I like that it is a college town,” she said. “So there are always younger people here. It was a really good place to raise my child. It has a lot of culture, but it’s still small enough and not overwhelming.”

Little did Bennett know that she would now be an associate editor for “The

Crossword.” She did secretarial work for a year after college, but soon found a job at Mathematical Reviews on Fourth Street in Ann Arbor.

“I loved how math works like any language,” Bennett said. “You can figure it out structurally and how it works as a language, then you can access it even if you don’t know what the numbers end up meaning, what the variables end up meaning.”

She started making crossword puzzles around 2013. Five years later, she cofounded the “Inkubator,” a crossword puzzle subscription service that sends out two to three puzzles a month, all created by women and non-binary constructors.

“Representation, both of gender and race, is a real issue in crossword puzzles right now,”

Bennett said. “There are very few women and people of color making puzzles, so one of our goals was to try to change that and make a difference.”

In 2017, when she started submitting puzzles to places like “The New York Times,” only 13 percent of puzzles were being made by women. One of the reasons why is because all of “The Crossword” editors were men.

“They’re just sitting there, choosing what themes they think are appealing,” Bennett said. “So it’s naturally filtering out people who make different sorts of themes or have a different voice.”

Recently, “The New York Times” started a Diversity Fellowship where each associate puzzle editor on the team chooses someone to mentor. Now the number of puzzles being made by women is up to 30 percent.

“It is eye-opening and fun to work with new voices,” Bennett said. “The future of crosswords is the new generations that are coming in, and people aren’t going to be attracted to solving crosswords if they don’t see themselves in them.”