Calm after the chaos at Santa Rosa’s Ridgway High School

The day after a brigade of heavily armed police fanned out across the grounds of Ridgway High School in Santa Rosa searching for the ?17-year-old who allegedly shot a classmate in the upper body just off campus, calm had been completely restored.

A mail carrier trod the same sidewalk across from the school which 24 hours earlier had teemed with police officers and SWAT team members.

The circles flown a day earlier by a police helicopter, searching for the suspect arrested some 90 minutes after the shooting, had been replaced Wednesday by a circle of Ridgway teachers, counselors and advisers who’d gathered outside the office of Principal Valerie Jordan.

They were sharing what they heard and learned from students during that morning’s fourth period.

After putting their chairs in a circle, the students at this 50-year-old continuation school were invited to “speak from their heart,” as Jordan put it, to talk about whether they felt scared, concerned or angry.

Many were properly grateful to the school’s staff for its swift, unerring response in the moments after the shooting, and to Jordan in particular.

Just before 9 a.m. Tuesday, she was meeting with two parents in her office when she heard through her open window two gunshots nearby.

“I thought, ‘That doesn’t sound right,’?’’recalled Jordan, who immediately stood up from the conference table in her office, walked around her desk, punched in the code for the public address system and announced in a calm but gravely serious voice: “This is an active lockdown. This is not a drill.” She instructed teachers to get as many students into their classrooms as possible, and lock the doors.

Based on her tone alone, Ridgway senior Eshon Hill said, “I knew it wasn’t a drill.”

A day later, those optional circle sessions with students were just one element of the wraparound support available to them after they’d spent 2½ hours sheltering in place the day before. If group therapy wasn’t their thing, they could go to the library and hang out with emotional support dogs.

Also available for the students were counselors provided by the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership and the Integrated Wellness Center.

Ridgway is a school where students work on individualized courses toward graduation. Enrollment varies, but is usually between 250 and 300. The day after the shooting, Jordan said attendance was “probably lighter than it should be.”

Among those taking the day off was senior Andrew Bayer, whose parents had kept a tense vigil the day before waiting for him on Ridgway Street during the lockdown.

Jessica and Brandon Bayer mentioned a fight at the school that had broken out in front of their son weeks earlier. With emotions high in the hours after the shooting, they declared that Andrew wouldn’t be returning to Ridgway.

But after a Wednesday meeting with Jordan and some members of her staff, they were reconsidering.

“After talking with them,” Jessica Bayer said, “I feel like they were actually super prepared for this. Most schools, it would’ve taken time to figure out what was going on. But (Jordan) immediately locked it down, and the cops were there in record time.”

She and her husband also are pleased with their son’s academic progress at Ridgway, where he’s earned 23½ credits since the beginning of September.

Students must be at least 16 years old and struggling at a traditional high school to enroll at Ridgway, which has been honored in past years as one of the state’s model continuation schools.

Each student is assigned an adviser to work with on a graduation plan. If a student needs to work or is having personal issues at home, the adviser helps to adjust the class schedule and assist them in catching up on missed schoolwork.

“Most of these kids have a trusted adult who failed them,” Jordan said. Their adviser “is somebody on their side. A trusted adult.”

As longtime Ridgway counselor Kathy Vyenielo put it Wednesday, “Connection before content.” Indeed, she keeps in her purse a stash of stickers bearing that mantra.

While the Bayers, like many other Ridgway parents, would like to see the district provide it with a school resource officer - a peace officer dedicated solely to their campus - they came away from Wednesday’s meeting with Jordan deeply impressed.

“She understood our concerns. She was super heartfelt,” Jessica Bayer said. To speak to the principal was to understand she believes “that this is her school, and these are her kids.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com.