GUILDERLAND — The mother of a Guilderland High School freshman was apprehensive on Thursday, the first day of school.

She was worried because her son would be attending school with a classmate who last February, as an eighth-grader at Farnsworth Middle School, had created a “kill list” with the names of 20 students and a teacher. Her son was one of the listed students.

“Forgive me; my head’s kind of a mess,” DeAnna Cornelius told The Enterprise on Thursday morning. “I’m still processing everything and then everything that occurred at the high school in Georgia is just hitting close to home right now.”

The day before, on Sept. 4, a 14-year-old boy had been accused of opening fire at his high school in Winder, Georgia, killing two students and two teachers and wounding others.

Cornelius wrote a letter to the Enterprise editor this week, detailing the Guilderland school administrators and police she had reached out to along with state officials, trying to learn what plan the school has in place to guarantee safety for the listed students.

“I’ve been told this remains at a district level,” Cornelius wrote. “I’ve reached out to and informed our district’s board of education, only to be ignored.”

She also wrote that it is “absolutely terrifying” not knowing details of a safety plan, stating, “If there is a secure plan in place, we as parents and community members, should be informed, and kept in the loop.”

Toward the end of the first day of school, The Enterprise heard back from Superintendent Marie Wiles. “Under these circumstances,” Wiles said, “there is no information I can share on how we would address the needs of a particular child.”

She noted that federal law protects the privacy of students.

Wiles went on, “We do have safety plans.” The district, Wiles said, works with the Guilderland Police Department and other first responders in developing those plans, which in large part must be confidential in order to guarantee safety.

Additional plans “for specific circumstances” have also been developed, Wiles said, but cannot be disclosed.

She noted, too, that the district has an active safety committee, which is continually evaluating and updating plans.

The incident

Over seven months ago, on Thursday, Feb. 1, school administrators called the Guilderland Police after students brought the “kill list,” posted on social media, to their attention. The boy who wrote the list was charged with making a threat of mass harm, a misdemeanor.

The next day, Feb. 2, Wiles wrote a notice posted to the district’s website, saying a Farnsworth student “had a list of school community members they intended to harm on a personal electronic device.”

Also on Feb. 2, Farnsworth Principal Michael Laster sent a letter to parents, saying the student “had a kill list on his personal device.”

The student was removed from school.

“The student was transported to a Mental Crisis Center under Mental Hygiene Law 9.41 and was referred to Albany County Probation for the criminal offense,” said the Guilderland Police in a press release on Feb. 3.

“There does not appear to be any further credible threat,” the release said, adding that police would continue to work with the student’s family and the school district to ensure safety.

The student’s name was not released because of his age.

This week, Cornelius vividly recalled the day she learned her son was on the list. The middle-school principal had called to tell them.

“Our immediate feeling was we were scared, terrified, and then concerned,” said Cornelius. “After hanging up with the principal, we immediately went into our son’s room, told him what happened, and asked him, ‘Buddy, have you said or done anything? Were you a part of any sort of group conversation? Was there any sort of bullying aspect that was going on?’

“He said, ‘No, no, no. Mommy, I would never do that. And, if I did do it’ — his honest-to-God answer and you could ask him this yourself and he even went to the principal the following week — ‘if there’s anything I did do that caused somebody to feel this way, please let me know because I want to make right of my wrongs. I want to apologize and I want to know what I can do to make this situation better.’”

Cornelius reported that the principal, when they talked together, told her son, “I wish I had an answer for you. But unfortunately, this was just something that happened. There was no event or discussion or aspect of bullying that occurred that made the individual feel that way.”

New school year

This week, Cornelius told The Enterprise of herself and the other parents whose children were on the list, “We have never all been brought together to talk about it or even individually. We have never been spoken to, aside from that initial notification on February 1st.”

She believes the school should have notified the parents involved that the boy who wrote the list and had not attended classes at the middle school after his arrest, was returning to school.

“The child was not to return,” she said.

Asked about this, Wiles told The Enterprise, “I’ve heard that through the grapevine. … I found no record of anyone saying that.”

She said there was no directive from her office on the matter.

Wiles also noted that Guilderland, by law, is obligated to provide a free and appropriate education to any child living in the district from the age of 5 to 21.

Cornelius said, “The only form of reassurance that we got is that the two children — being my son and the individual that is returning — they do not share any classes together. The school would not confirm if this child was sharing any classes with any of the other students on the list.”

Cornelius went on, about her son, “He knows there is a possibility that they may see one another in the hall and they may share a lunch period. They could not confirm if the child would be in the same lunch period or not.”

Cornelius concluded of her son, “He’s trying to put his best foot forward and just move through and focus on school and focus on sports and try to just make it as best as he possibly can.”

Wiles said that the district’s top priority is student safety.

She noted that there are medical health providers in each of the district’s seven school buildings; there are also school psychologists, social workers, counselors, and therapy dogs.

In addition, curricula, starting with the Positivity Project at the five elementary schools, stresses the importance of mental well-being — “the positive way to look at life and work through the difficulties everyone faces,” said Wiles.

She noted the added stressors modern students face, with the impact of smartphones and social media, which are not unique to Guilderland.

The district is committed to keeping everyone — staff as well as students — safe, said Wiles.

On the first day of school, Wiles said, she was particularly cognizant of the important work involved in making school a safe and welcoming place for all children to be successful in later life.

“We appreciate how parents feel about handing off their children for us to keep them safe … It has been and continues to be our top priority,” Wiles said of 3,000 families entrusting the safety of their 5,000 children to the Guilderland schools.