Information Pertinent to Columbine High School

Information Pertinent to Columbine High School

[ Superintendent of Columbine High Known in Washington State ]

The Drudge Report, April 24, 1999, reports that it has obtained a transcript of a 1991 ABC News 20/20 program profiling death education classes at Columbine High School. The 1991 program reported that one student planned to kill herself after attending the classes, which had the students discuss, among other things, what they wanted to look like in their casket. Anchor Hugh Downs introduced the segment by stating that "while most schools make it [death education] part of health class, some actually make it an entire course." Reporter Tom Jarriel questioned what affect these classes would really have on "impressionable young minds."

Jane Hammond, Superintendent of Columbine High School, was previously Superintendent of Everett School District in Washington state. In 1993, in her first year as superintendent of Everett, Hammond led the Everett Schools into education reform.

Everett School District, along with Edmonds School District (Brian Benzel), Seattle School District, Highline School District, and Shoreline School District formed the Washington Alliance for Better Schools and entered into a contract with National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) to build "break the mold" schools according to the five design tasks of the National Alliance for Restructuring Education (NARE), the NCEE design team under contract to the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC)—a coalition of businesses formed in 1991 to oversee the thoroughgoing restructuring of schools nation-wide. It is not known when Hammond left Everett School District.

Following the incident at Littleton, it was reported in the Spokesman Review, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, bureau, that Hammond called the superintendent of the Coeur d'Alene School District, David Rawls, who was, in 1996, the Superintendent of the Moses Lake, Washington, School District when Barry Loukaitas killed a teacher and two students at Frontier Junior High in Moses Lake. The Spokesman Review reported that Hammond was a "friend" of Superintendent Rawls. According to the Spokesman Review article, Rawls reported that he told Hammond "how to craft press releases, the best ways to say 'I don't know' and 'We'll tell you as soon as we know.'"

╪