‘Be better, protect us’: Angry Montgomery High students say school failed them after classmate’s death

Sixteen-year-old Olivia Cruz had barely slept since Tuesday.

She was wracked with guilt, she said, because she was alive and her best friend, Jayden Pienta, was not.

Cruz helped Pienta walk to the school nurse Wednesday morning just moments after he had been stabbed three times by another student at Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa.

“I’m speechless. Broken. Angry,” she said Friday.

It was three days after the 16-year-old Pienta, a friend she had known since kindergarten, was killed in a classroom confrontation.

Cruz was one of the first to call 911, just after 11 a.m. Wednesday, after Pienta entered an art class, engaged in a fight with a 15-year-old freshman and suffered three stab wounds across his chest and back.

She waited with him in the school nurse’s office until an ambulance arrived. That was the last time she saw him alive.

Cruz returned Friday to the school’s campus and spent time with friends among the piles of flowers and rows of prayer candles assembled as a makeshift, impromptu memorial for Pienta.

She read the posters scrawled with messages of love and grief.

“Sissy loves you buggy,” one message read.

“Jayden we love you! We will miss you every day with all our hearts,” said another.

She spotted a photo of a young, beaming Pienta and recalled the path that led to Wednesday’s deadly attack.

“I do blame the school on his death,” she said.

After Pienta’s death, The Press Democrat spent two days in the company of Montgomery High students. In interviews — with individuals and small groups — they discussed attending classes in an aged, crumbling building and witnessing violent fights among classmates.

They talked of wrestling with the complex pressures of being teens against the backdrop of years of trauma caused by Sonoma County wildfires, other natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.

They are angry. They are frustrated.

They are afraid. They are hurting.

That cauldron of pressure, uncertainty and fear finally boiled over last week. And students reeling from the tragedy and everything that preceded it are asking each other the same question: Will Pienta’s fatal stabbing finally get the attention of district administrators?

Emotions run high

On Thursday morning, a day before students and staff would return for a campus gathering, the school was quiet. The pile of flowers lying before Pienta’s memorial was starting to grow. A few people lingered, paying respects.

An occasional sob filled the air with rustling leaves and chirping birds.

A group of high school girls, including Cruz, hugged one another and wiped away their tears.

“I loved him,” one girl said of Pienta.

“I’m angry,” chimed another.

“I’m annoyed and frustrated,” said a third.

Therapy dogs, art projects, food and a few teachers and campus supervisors were provided to students after classes were canceled until Monday.

Students embraced each other and ate pizza together.

Jackson Hals, a sophomore, sat with his head in his hands at the memorial. He’s known Pienta since elementary school, and they used to play football together.

Though they weren’t as close in high school, Hals still felt shock.

“He’s gone, the friend I kind of grew up with in school ― he’s gone,” he said. “I’m always going to have those memories, but he’s not here anymore and that’s kind of weird,” Hals said.

“And I kind of feel angry.”

There was no one to protect the students, he said. The fighting had already been tearing the school community apart.

Now, a classmate was dead and so many are traumatized in the wake of Wednesday’s tragedy.

Students don’t feel safe, he said, and they want change.

What’s going on?

“People don’t know how to communicate, so they communicate with their fists and they have the freedom to do that because there’s not any adults around and nobody does anything about it,” Cruz said.

There have been more physical fights so far this school year than seen previously, Cruz and other students said. Two to five fights a week aren’t anything new.

The Santa Rosa Police Department responded to 97 calls for service at the school — described as mostly nonviolent — in the past 12 months.

School officials did not return Press Democrat inquiries related to how many fights they were aware of, but Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Anna Trunnell, in a Friday interview with The Press Democrat, insisted administrators are listening to the students.

She had attended three “listening sessions” with staff and had spoken with some students on campus since Wednesday’s events.

“What I am seeing is that there is a broad theme of safety concerns not only at Montgomery, but across the district and beyond,” Trunnell said. “I need to continue to hear from the people that are at the heart of the work.”

Trunnell said the district has “tried to respond in ways that provide more resources at the site level for mental health and restorative practices.”

She pointed to staff that include a full-time and a part-time psychologist, a therapist, two campus supervisors, five counselors, a restorative specialist and a family engagement facilitator.“

Montgomery High School Principal Adam Paulson said in an email late Friday he would forward questions from The Press Democrat to the district’s communications liaison for permission to answer.

Fights happen regularly, students said, between different groups — it’s not just students of a particular ethnicity or socioeconomic group. The altercations usually happen in the nooks and crannies of campus, away from the few campus supervisors who patrol the school.

Groups of students sometimes rush to watch. Teachers and classmates are usually the ones to break them up.

Fights and other violent clashes on other Santa Rosa City Schools campuses were brought up by frustrated students who gathered Friday at Montgomery High. One of the most recent happened just minutes before Wednesday’s stabbing, when a Maria Carillo High School student was found with a gun.

At the start of the school year, on-campus fights at Montgomery High happened so frequently, administrators convened an assembly aimed at stopping the clashes, students said.

Few things have changed since then, students told The Press Democrat. And that is contributing to a culture of fear and uncertainty.

While Cruz said the school’s staff is close with students, from her perspective, they don’t necessarily have the training to respond to school violence or issues at home.

There should have been more intervention, she said.

Why is it happening?

Standing around in clusters Friday, some students expressed frustration about the school’s facility issues.

Continued sewage system problems, a leaking roof, broken bathroom stall locks, not enough bathrooms — it adds to the feeling of overall neglect on the campus, said Xheadoex Cohen, a 17-year-old senior.

Cohen peppered school and city officials with pointed questions at a Wednesday afternoon news conference about the fatal stabbing.

“Why has it taken a loss of life for you guys to start caring about our school?” he asked.

Students applauded.

In a Feb. 25 story, The Press Democrat revealed infrastructural problems at the school, mechanical systems that had fallen into disrepair and become hazardous. Students had been advocating for district funds to be used to fix them and had planned to address the school board March 8.

Ava Parmelee, a student government member who raised the alarm over campus issues, said she feels devastated and “overwhelmed” by Pienta’s death.

Now, she said, she and others are unsure of their next steps as security undoubtedly will become the board’s priority. But she believes it’s all interconnected — the fighting and the state of the school’s physical environment.

Systemic neglect of the campus has contributed to a feeling that people don’t care about the kids, she said.

“I do love the school and I love the people,” Parmelee said as she teared up. “I'm hoping this can be a learning opportunity for all people involved.”

Montgomery teachers have been trying to help the students and the administrators are trying to help the teachers, but everyone is tired and not getting paid enough, she said.

Parmelee called for more restorative specialists, and asked for the district to hear the students and staff’s pleas for help.

“We’re sad and we just want change,” said John O’Donnell, 17, who stood with a group of friends Friday in front of Pienta’s memorial.

“I blame everything on the lack of funding,” he added.

The teachers try their best, O’Donnell said, but the school needs more mental health experts, security, counselors and campus supervisors.

“It’s not encouraging us to care about learning or school,” O’Donnell said.

Emma Walker, 16, was surrounded by friends at the center of campus Friday. “There’s no sense of quality or respect in the atmosphere here,” she said.

“... The behavior issues going on here are a result of the fact that our facilities are rundown.

“We feel we lost a sense of safety and security.”

To help ensure safety, additional adult staff and law enforcement will be on campus for at least two days starting Monday, according to Trunnell.

“We will demonstrate that we care about our students, that we are here for them and that they can come to us when things are going on,” she said.

Hals, the sophomore, had a message for school officials.

“Be better, protect us,” he said.

Reporter Jeremy Hay contributed. You can reach Staff Writer Alana Minkler at 707-526-8531 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @alana_minkler.