On a Thursday in January, a shot rang out in an Atascocita High School parking lot.

The suspected gunman, a student, sat in a red Chevy Impala. A bullet struck the foot of another student, who, according to court documents, ran from the car with a bag of weed.

Forty-three percent of students the next day stayed home from school.

Such a drop wasn’t unheard of. Sixteen other districts in the state have received waivers for low attendance days from the Texas Education Agency so far this school year because of safety issues, meaning their attendance was at least 10 percentage points below the previous year’s average.

The Atascocita incident, at a time when mass shootings are never far from the public mind, highlighted the challenges for educators whose role today is not only to teach but also to protect.

Last week alone, a 14-year-old in Katy allegedly texted a student a photo of a gun and warned the student not go to school. A gun was found in a Pearland middle school locker. And a student in the East Texas town of Harleton, according to the local paper, allegedly threatened to bring a gun to school.

Humble ISD staff say they are as prepared as any district can be to handle an active shooter. Three weeks before the parking lot shooting, staff and law enforcement officers practiced what to do in such a scenario.

Administrators felt it was safe for students to come to school the day after the parking lot shooting. They wanted to provide a sense of normalcy. But they also allowed students to stay home — without penalty.

“In today’s time, everyone’s on heightened alert,” Humble ISD board member Robert Sitton said. “When Santa Fe happened, I mean, that’s close to home.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: 'There's a shooting at school'

This parking lot shooting didn’t approach the magnitude of the tragedy at Santa Fe High School, where a gunman killed 10 people and wounded 13 on May 18, 2018. But it was hard to know what was happening in the moment, Superintendent Elizabeth Fagen said.

“You’re just trying to manage the worst case scenario because that’s what you have to do,” Fagen said. “Somebody’s been shot in the parking lot and that’s all you know.”

Lock the doors

The shooting took place around 6:20 p.m. Jan. 31. Most students were home. Basketball practice was wrapping up. The swim and drill teams were still practicing.

Katharine Holmes, 52, was among parents putting rhinestones on drill team costumes when someone burst into the dance room, shouting for help.

Maybe a person had a heart attack, or fell, Holmes thought. She hurried into the hallway and saw the injured student on the floor. Holmes, an assistant principal at another Humble ISD school, dialed 911.

Another parent and district employee, Bethanie Wheeler, 40, joined her in the hallway and put the injured student’s head in her lap. She asked questions, hoping to keep him calm: What was his name? Where was he hurt?

Like Holmes, Wheeler was trained for this. The injured student and his friend thought the shooter had driven away, but no one could be sure.

The girls were ushered into the locker room, which they locked. One dad, an off-duty officer, began locking doors to the building.

Other parents got gauze from the athletic training office.

“You’re going to be fine,” Wheeler remembered saying to the student.

With his friend behind the wheel, the alleged shooter, Mikael Neciosup, 17, indeed had left the school.

He posted a video to Snapchat that circulated among students and parents. KPRC, Channel 2, published it.

“I’ll shoot you and all y’alls little homeboys,” he says in the recording. “I’m from Atascocita and I’m a real gangster.”

Snapchat concerns

Word of what happened spread quickly.

Daina Harper’s oldest daughter showed Harper the Snapchat video. It sounded to Harper like a threat of retaliation.

“It was already everywhere,” Harper said of the video. “Everybody was talking to everybody through everything.”

Jennifer Brown picked up her son around 5:30 p.m. near campus. He and his sister saw posts about the shooting on Snapchat when they got home.

They felt baffled and shocked.

“I saw this kid in class,” her son, Jayce Pruitt, recalled, “and he got shot.”

Humble ISD in 2017 launched an app for students to report safety threats. Tips came in.

Brown wasn’t sure if her kids should go to school the next day. Harper thought school leaders should close the campus.

Trying to balance speed with accuracy, administrators sent their first update at 7:48 p.m.: The school would hold classes the next day.

At 9:09 p.m.: Extra police would be on campus. It was believed to be an isolated incident.

At 10:27 p.m.: Extra counselors would be on hand. Absences would not count against students.

Harper asked her two daughters if they wanted to go to school. They said no. How would they get work done? What if there was retaliation?

Brown asked in a parents’ Facebook group whether others were sending their kids. Fifty-six replied yes and 44 no.

The mother felt reluctant but reassured that there would be extra police. She decided to take Jayce and his sister Jordynn, 17-year-old twins, to school.

Empty hallways

At 5:52 a.m. parents received one last update: The suspect was in custody. The victim was recovering.

Neciosup, on bond for a prior drug offense, faced a charge of aggravated assault. He would be placed in coming days on house arrest. His attorney, Patricia Segura, could not be reached for comment.

That next day, Friday, Feb. 1, 1,551 kids were absent from Atascocita High School — the school with the highest enrollment in the district.

Brown recalled getting a text from her daughter: “Nobody’s at school.” Jordynn could get to class quickly through the empty hallways.

On other days, if the fire alarm went off, Jordynn tried not to think about how a shooter might attack. That day, she and her brother felt a little nervous.

“It didn’t feel right at all,” Jayce said.

Assistant Superintendent Trey Kraemer arrived early and noticed quickly that attendance was going to be down.

The school day wore on. The atmosphere was reserved, Kraemer said. Administrators left it up to teachers how to use the day.

“It’s not normal to have 10 or 15 kids absent from a class,” Kraemer said.

In the Facebook group, one mom wrote she sent her son with “full faith and confidence” in the school’s efforts to keep kids safe.

Another mom explained in an email that she wanted to teach her sons to confront adversity: “You have to face your fear and move on with your life.”

A third described in a Facebook message how she picked up her shaken 7th-grade daughter at lunch. The two were caught in the police activity clearing the high school the night before, when her daughter had a band lesson.

A shared issue

Such was the dilemma: Err on the side of caution or continue with life as normal?

Humble ISD, while confident the school was safe and teachers were ready to support students, felt that was a choice best left to the parents and kids.

School districts apply for the low attendance waivers because their funding hinges on the number of students who attend. Patterns have emerged over time.

The number of districts requesting waivers spiked in the 2012-2013 school year, when the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., occurred. A high number of waivers were also requested the next year, when San Antonio schools were threatened.

Last year, when there were shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and in Santa Fe, two of the deadliest in history, safety waivers were approved for more Texas school district than in any of the last 10 years.

Galena Park, Aldine and Dickinson ISDs were among those in the Houston area that reported safety-related attendance drops this school year. Galena Park’s followed an unsubstantiated threat.

“I think it is where we are at this day and age,” Galena Park ISD spokesperson Terri Moore said. “Parents are very concerned about their children.”

Atascocita High School this school year lost students in a car crash and a staff member died. Hurricane Harvey ravaged the area in 2017.

It was the responsibility of school leaders to calm everyone as best they could, said Sitton, the board member.

“Any time you hear shooting and school property in one sentence… that’s the time we’re living in today,” Sitton said. “Immediately you go to active shooter. You go to school shooting.”

emily.foxhall@chron.com

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