EDWIN NAIDU

A WEBSITE launched under the leadership of University of KwaZulu Natal’s Environmental Fluid Mechanics Lab (EFML) Co-Director, Dr Justin Pringle, can provide real-time guidance to beachgoers in Durban regarding the safety of water at popular beaches for swimming.

This comes after the increase in sewage pollution along the coastline, with Durban’s beaches often demonstrating critically high levels of Escherichia coli (E. coli), a harmless bacteria found in the guts of healthy people and animals that indicates the presence of faecal matter in the water.

While E. coli decays rapidly in a marine environment, making it a less-than-ideal indicator, harmful pathogens from sewage pollution may still be present and threaten human and aquatic health, causing diseases including cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever, and more.

In response to these challenges and in the interest of providing scientific information to the public, Pringle launched Woz’Olwandle, meaning “come to the sea” in isiZulu. Based on a tool developed for Los Angeles beaches in the United States (US), the Beach Report Card, the Woz’Olwandle website features information synthesised by a fluid dynamics computer model that was developed by UKZN’s Professor Derek Stretch (who heads up the EFML with Pringle) and alumnus Mr Dave Mardon, now an Associate at Water Environment Ltd in the United Kingdom, in the early 2000s.

This model was repurposed to process several data and estimate the concentrations of E. coli at six central Durban beaches over 24 hours, using a key of three “smiley” icons in green, orange, or red to indicate whether conditions are “good”, “acceptable”, or “poor”.

The website is hosted on a US server to prevent outages caused by ongoing load-shedding in South Africa.

Pringle hopes that the tool will not only provide the most up-to-date information for people to use in deciding if and where to swim but also spark discussion about the problem of sewage pollution and potential solutions. Real-time information is important because other information provided on water quality takes time to gather, analyse, and release, often making it out of date by the time users receive it.

The Woz’Olwandle website has already attracted attention for its efforts with 3 500 visits over the past month, from South Africa, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, and Germany.

INSIDE EDUCATION

ANN BERNSTEIN

IN February 2023, a Soweto school governing body treasurer lamented: “We’re dealing with gangsters in the education department; they’re out to loot schools … We’re calling for help from law enforcement or the Special Investigating Unit.”

In case anyone thinks this was an isolated incident, the 2022 Corruption Watch report, Sound the Alarm, confirmed that education was one of the top three areas in which complaints of corruption were reported by the public the other two were policing and state – owned enterprises.

The most common education complaints were misappropriation of resources 45%, maladministration 17%, abuse of authority victimisation of whistleblowers 15%, “sextortion”, bribery for jobs and flouting recruitment processes 12%, and procurement irregularities 11%.

Public awareness of these issues goes back nearly a decade. In April 2014, City Press journalists revealed that a jobs-for-cash racket was being run by members of the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union Sadtu , the largest of its kind in the country. Principal and deputy principal positions were routinely sold for between R30 000 and R45 000 in KwaZulu-Natal, while investigations of similar transgressions were under way in Limpopo and North – West.

PAYING OFFICIALS

Sitting principals, the reporters revealed, had been ousted from their posts, under threat of their lives, and replaced by candidates who admitted having secured their positions by paying Sadtu officials.

These officials would then coerce sometimes violently members of school governing bodies SGBs to select their preferred candidates. Alternatively, Sadtu members would collaborate in getting favoured individuals on to SGBs to ensure that those who had paid for positions obtained them. There were also accounts of kidnapping and, in one instance, murder.

Despite initially downplaying reports of the scandal, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga eventually took decisive action by appointing a task team to investigate the allegations. Professor John Volmink, then chairperson of Umalusi, the national school certification and accreditation body, was appointed to head the ministerial task team (MTT).

The MTT interviewed district managers, teachers and union officials around the country. Forensic members of the team, drawn from auditing firm Deloitte and the department of justice, followed up on specific allegations.

On February 29 2016, the team submitted its 285page report to the minister, who released it publicly on May 21 that year, following sustained pressure from the media, civil society and parents.

Criminal practices identified by the MTT ranged from petty corruption to murder. The rot was so extensive that a top North-West education official reportedly declared that his department had “so many cases of wrongdoing that if he asked the SA Police Service SAPS to follow them up, it would amount to closing down the department”.

CORRUPT PROCUREMENT

The Gauteng department of education reported that it was aware of corrupt procurement and recruitment processes, including maladministration by SGBs when selecting and appointing teachers to top positions.

Investigators noted that malpractice had become so normalised that people were living and working in a climate of fear, and that there was a “culture of silence” regarding wrongdoing.

In addition to pervasive corruption, the MTT identified cadre deployment as a major barrier to the effective functioning of the education system. Cadre deployment would later be recognised and defined by the report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture as the unlawful and unconstitutional practice of appointing loyal “cadres to strategic positions in the state and state employment”.

The authors of the MTT report expressed grave concerns about the “enormous power and influence by a union which seeks to entrench itself repeatedly and inexorably”. It ultimately found that Sadtu was “in de facto charge of the management, administration and priorities of education” in “six and possibly more of the nine provinces”.

Stop and read that again. Its implications are shocking. Sadtu’s control reduces accountability and ultimately misdirects the focus of the entire bureaucracy. Loyalty based appointments have a doubly negative effect: they bring people into the bureaucracy who may not be able to do the job, creating a set of incentives and an institutional culture in which appropriate, capable people are overlooked and become despondent.

Sadtu’s capture of the education system is a key reason for South Africa’s dismal academic performance. When our pupils take international tests, we are ranked as either last or among the bottom three countries.

While other countries test grade 4s, we test grade 5s. When they test grade 8s, we test grade 9s. The deficiency has a knock-on effect that can only be closed by upgrading the quality of teachers instructing our children.

The MTT made several important recommendations to address corruption and state capture.

These included adopting a zero tolerance stance on corruption, identifying and reporting corrupt individuals to the SAPS for criminal prosecution, protecting whistleblowers from possible reprisals by creating a specialised division in the department, professionalising the bureaucracy by preventing managers from belonging to the same unions as the teachers they supervised, removing the power of SGBs to recommend appointments and renegotiating the observer status unions enjoyed in hiring and promotion processes.

It is now nine years since the jobs-for-cash story broke in City Press and nearly seven years since the release of the MTT report. Volmink told the Centre for Development and Enterprise CDE in September 2019 and again in February 2023 that, as far as he was aware, not a single recommendation from the report had been implemented and not a single individual implicated in wrongdoing had been prosecuted.

This was echoed by education experts Dr Nic Spaull and department of basic education researcher Dr Stephen Taylor in July 2022.

Rooting out corruption and ending cadre deployment are the first steps in a process of systemwide education reforms. Sadtu aligned officials who benefit from the status quo must be stopped from blocking attempts to implement such reforms, or they will fail.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

This is not an argument against unions in the education sector. Teachers are entitled to form unions, as are officials and managers and teachers is obvious. It is also true that many committed and capable individual teachers are members of Sadtu.

What needs to be tackled urgently is the capture of the education system by Sadtu at the expense of both teachers and pupils.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has made anticorruption efforts a priority of his tenure. The graft and state capture exposed in the education sector are as devastating as they are in the rest of government.

The groundwork has already been laid by the MTT report. It is time for all of us senior government leaders, civil society, political parties, business, parents and the public at large to openly acknowledge the reality of state capture and corruption in education, and push for measures that will end it. We cannot allow another generation of pupils in our schools to be condemned to an appalling education.

South Africa urgently needs education reform that addresses the root causes of systemic dysfunction.

Written by Ann Bernstein, head of the CDE. This article is based on The Silent Crisis: Time to Fix SA’s Schools, a new series of five CDE reports.

AISHA MALIK

GOOGLE is rolling out new Chrome and Classroom features for teachers and students, the company announced on Tuesday. The tech giant is adding a new “reading mode” for Chrome, an AI-powered Hand Raise Gesture Detection feature for Meet and more.

The new “reading mode” is a customizable reader view coming to the side panel in the company’s browser.

The new feature is designed to help students with dyslexia and ADHD. Reading mode reduces distracting elements on the screen, like images and videos, to help users focus on a page’s primary content. You can also customize settings like the typeface, font size and spacing, along with the text and background color. Reading mode will be available in the Chrome browser in ChromeOS in M114.

The new AI-powered Hand Raise Gesture Detection feature, which is coming to all Google Workspace for Education users, is designed to make meetings more natural.

When you physically raise your hand, Meet will automatically raise the Hand Raise icon and move you to the main grid. The new feature will roll out in the coming months.

Google is also launching the ability for two or more teachers to manage slides together through a new “co-presenting” feature that’s rolling out in the coming months.

Another new Google Classroom feature will give educators the ability to add interactive questions to a YouTube video and assign it to students. As the video plays, students can answer the questions, get real-time feedback on their responses and rewatch the video again if needed.

Educators can receive insights about their students’ progress, like which questions they struggled with.

The beta version of this feature will be available in English, Japanese, Malay, Portuguese and Spanish.

In addition, Google announced a new “practice sets” feature that uses AI to help educators turn their existing teaching content into interactive assignments and provide more personalized support. Practice sets will be available globally in English in the coming weeks, with plans for additional languages in the future.

“As teachers add questions to their practice set, they’ll see suggestions for skills to focus on — like solving equations with decimals or writing thesis statements,” the company wrote in a blog post.

“Based on the skills selected, students will receive helpful hints if they get stuck. Through auto-generated insights, practice sets also help educators quickly identify gaps in understanding at both the class and student level, so they can tailor their approach. Educators can even share practice sets with other verified teachers in their domain.”

Google also announced that it’s adding new updates for Screencast, which is its tool that lets educators record and share lessons.

The company is expanding recording and transcription support to a dozen new languages, including Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish.

In addition, Google is releasing a web player so students and teachers can watch screencasts in any browser on any device. Lastly, Google is introducing demo tools that allow users to animate clicks and taps and highlight any keyboard shortcuts they use on the screen. The new updates will begin rolling out to ChromeOS 112 users in early April.

Google initially launched a slew of new features for teachers and students during the pandemic when schools closed, but has since still steadily been introducing new online-based education features for both teachers and students.

Techcrunch

STAFF REPORTER

COUNTING down on Friday to 50 days before South Africa plays host to the World Table Tennis Championship Finals, Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Zizi Kodwa, said the tournament is a significant event in the sporting calendar.

“We are grateful to the International Table Tennis Federation for granting us the honour of hosting the event, and we have no doubt that Mr Joe Carrim’ and his colleagues at the South African Table Tennis Board, will leave no stone unturned to make it a great African experience,” Kodwa said.

“Sport, Arts and Culture are important levers of social cohesion and nation-building and play a major role in promoting tourism and boosting the economy of our country hence we are grateful to host this prestigious sporting competition,” he said.

The ITTF World Table Tennis Championships Finals is returning to Africa for the first time since Egypt in 1939, and Durban, South Africa, is gearing up to host this year’s event.

A hippopotamus, named Takuma, which embodied the strength and abundance of Africa’s cultural heritage and was chosen as the official mascot for the World Championships.

Takuma was designed by Tumelo Nkoana, a 13-year-old from Mogogelo Village north of Pretoria, who won a nationwide competition to select a mascot for the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in 2013, beating over 180 other entries. Since then, Takuma has become the mascot for all sports in South Africa.

INSIDE EDUCATION

EDWIN NAIDU

CABINET has approved the final version of the STI Decadal Plan, and implementation is already underway, focusing mainly on tackling grand societal challenges and addressing priorities, such as climate change and environmental sustainability, according to Department of Science and Innovation Director-General Dr Phil Mjwara.

The plan aims to address:

– Societal grand challenges: Climate change and environmental sustainability; future- proof education and skills; and the future of society.
– STI priorities: Modernising sectors of the economy (manufacturing, agriculture and mining); new sources of growth (the digital and circular economies); health innovation; energy innovation; innovation-enabled capable state; and innovation in support of social progress.

Mjwara told the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, Science and Technology last Friday that the National Development Plan sees human capital development as central to addressing South Africa’s unemployment, poverty and inequality challenges.

Transformation was pivotal to the plan. To this end, he said A Department of Science and Innovation task team had been established to co-create a robust, evidence-based transformation agenda for the next ten years.

Furthermore, he said the team would seek to identify reforms and actions to be implemented by the DSI and its entities over the 2020-2025 cycle to enhance transformation outcomes.

INSIDE EDUCATION

EDWIN NAIDU

THE Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Dr Blade Nzimande, met with German Minister of Research and Education, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, during her recent two-day visit to South Africa.

The Ministers signed a declaration to establish a joint Research Chair on Just Energy Transition.

Ahead of the signing, which took place in Cape Town last week, the German Minister visited the Hydrogen Catalysis (HYSA catalysis) Centre of Competence at the University of Cape Town.

Both Ministers addressed the Research Networks for Health Innovation in Sub- Saharan Africa (RHISSA) conference, which took place at the Vineyard Hotel in Newlands Cape Town.

The German Minister’s visit is aimed at, among others, strengthening bilateral relations and celebrating the success of the German-funded Research Networks for Health Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa (RHISSA) programme.

The RHISSA has seen an investment of 50 million Euros over five years.

The programme is in its second phase.

Minister Stark-Watzinger also visited the Square Kilometre Array site in the Northern Cape in anticipation of full German membership of SKAO.

INSIDE EDUCATION

EDWIN NAIDU

UMALUSI has launched a newly implemented Online Application System for Replacement Certificates.

Candidates can access the system from anywhere (home or office) via a cellphone or personal computer to apply directly to Umalusi to replace their lost or damaged certificates.

Umalusi Council sets and monitors standards for general and further education and training in South Africa.

The Council is tasked with developing and managing a sub-framework of qualifications for general and further education and training and for the attendant quality assurance.

The new system was launched during a webinar, “Innovatively replacing your lost or damaged certificate issued by Umalusi”, on 30 March.

The purpose was to reduce the turnaround time and costs of replacing a lost or damaged certificate.

At the cost of R137.00, a candidate can collect a replacement certificate from Umalusi within two workings days of the application. Alternatively, a candidate can pay R202.00 (R137.00 for the certificate and R65.00 for courier fees) to have the certificate sent within 7 working days to their chosen physical address anywhere within the borders of South Africa.

The webinar was attended by officials from education stakeholder organisations in South Africa, Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) and Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC).

INSIDE EDUCATION

SOUTH Africa has one of the worst-performing education systems in the world, plagued by incompetence and corruption, and the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) is calling for the head of the minister of basic education, among other things. 

The CDE released several reports on South Africa’s education system, outlining its failings, the factors responsible, and recommendations for the actions that need to be taken to improve education in the country. 

“The President speaks of a ‘silent revolution’, while the minister talks of a ‘system on the rise’. The truth is that we face a silent crisis in our schools: South Africa has one of the worst performing education systems in the world,” said CDE’S Executive Director Ann Bernstein.

South Africa devotes a significant proportion of government revenue to basic education – roughly 13%, noted the report. 

To justify such outlays in the context of rising fiscal pressures in 2023, we should expect globally competitive learning levels, a reduction in learning inequality, new opportunities for children from poor households, and a large, trainable workforce. 

However, Bernstein said that, in reality, very little of this is evident.

Levels of education are circling the drain

According to professor Lant Pritchett, a specialist in education reform, South Africa is the single biggest learning underperformer relative to GDP per capita among low and middle-income countries.

South Africa does worse than Kenya or Tanzania, which have a GDP per capita of less than one-fifth of South Africa. The report states that our spending commitments are equivalent to some high-performing Scandinavian countries, but our learning outcomes are worse than neighbouring Eswatini. 

To put it into perspective, the distance between our performance and Singapore’s, one of the world’s richest and best learning-outcome performers, is equivalent to “a whole generation of schooling loss”. 

This is evident in the several international benchmark assessments South Africa have participated in over the past two decades, with some of the most notable results being:

After a year of school, more than 50% of Grade 1 learners don’t know all the letters in the alphabet.

78% of Grade 4 learners could not read for meaning in any language.

Out of 39 participating countries, South Africa’s Grade 9 learners – on a test designed for Grade 8s – placed 38th (second last) in mathematics proficiency and last place (39th) in science proficiency. 

Covid 19 lockdowns devastated learning in South Africa (as elsewhere). Experts believe the average 10-year-old knows less than the average 9-year-old before the pandemic.

Many countries poorer than South Africa outperform us in these tests, including Morocco, Egypt, Georgia, Kosovo and Albania.

The report noted, for example, that the typical Grade 6 child in Kenya is around two to three years of learning ahead of a Grade 6 learner in the Eastern Cape. 

“South Africa’s comparative performance is shocking. When our learners take international tests, we are either last or in the bottom three countries. Even more devastating, while other countries test Grade 4s, we test Grade 5s; when they test Grade 8s, we test Grade 9s,” said Bernstein.

Quality of teachers and corruption

While the poverty of learners and their families and ongoing infrastructural deficits play a role, the report highlighted that a significant contribution to the state of education in South Africa is the quality of teachers and corruption within its system. 

Two primary factors contribute to poor teaching levels. First, many teachers lack the capabilities (content knowledge and pedagogical skills) to teach better. The second is that a non-trivial number is unwilling to do so, said the report. 

Four out of five teachers in public schools lack the content knowledge and pedagogical skills to teach their subjects.

In maths, for example, the proficiency levels of South African teachers (41%) rank far below that of their peers in Kenya (95%) and Zimbabwe (87%).

Moreover, the report revealed that 79% of Grade 6 maths teachers in the country scored below 60% on a Grade 6 maths test.

Compounding the issue is that South Africa has the highest teacher absenteeism rate of all SADC countries, which stood at 10% in 2017. 

Corruption adds to the pile of obstacles in the education system’s way. 

A report by the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU), released in 2015, assessing rural literacy found extensive union involvement in corrupt teacher hiring and promotion processes.

This was known as the “jobs for cash” scandal, implicating SADTU – the country’s dominant teacher union – where members would coordinate to get favoured individuals onto the school governing body (SGB) to ensure those who paid for positions could land them. 

The report noted examples of this in Kwa-Zulu Natal, where principal and deputy principal positions were routinely sold for between R30,000 and R45,000.

In 2016, the Miniter of education appointed a ministerial task team (MTT) to investigate the issue, which found that in six or possibly more of the nine provinces, SADTU was in charge of the management, administration and priorities of education in the country. 

The MTT found that all deputy directors general of the DBE were SADTU members, frequently attending union meetings.

Despite findings of criminality by the MTT, no government official implicated in the 2014-2015′ jobs for cash’ scandals has been prosecuted or suspended, said Bernstein. 

She added that not one of the key MTT recommendations to fight corruption and push back state capture has been implemented to this day.

CDE recommendations

CDE recommendations focus on five areas for action to improve education outcomes:

Tackle corruption and state capture in education by prohibiting cadre deployment and introducing measures that remove SADTU’s stranglehold on education departments.

Raise accountability levels by bringing back the Annual National Assessment (ANA) tests for Grades 1 to 9, reinvigorating an independent National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU), and giving principals more power over the appointment and management of teachers in their schools.

Improve teacher performance by introducing higher teacher training standards, more effective support for existing teachers and the urgent recruitment of skilled foreign teachers in areas of shortage (maths and science).

Install fresh leadership in public education. South Africa needs a new Minister of Basic Education, DG and the top team at national and provincial levels to achieve systemwide reform. The President’s full support for tough political decisions is essential.

Set realistic national and provincial performance goals. Stretch targets are required to move off the bottom of international tests. Ensuring all 10-year-olds can read for meaning by 2030 is another worthy goal, but a plan, a budget and regular reporting on progress must accompany this presidential aspiration dating back to 2019. 

According to the report, evidence from global studies shows that successful reform programmes can start producing meaningful results in three to five years. 

“The time has come for civil society, business, all political parties, parents and the public to up the pressure on government: we all need to push for systemwide reforms that significantly improve the quality of teaching in the classroom,” said Bernstein.

Business Tech

WILLIAM HATCH

GOOD news! Colorado recently passed a law that made school meals free for every student, regardless of financial eligibility. Starting late in 2023, the Healthy School Meals for All program will officially launch in most Colorado school districts. This state-funded program aims to ensure that every kid attending school will have the nutrients they need to continue learning and thriving in their classes.

Let’s explore Colorado’s lead and others as they follow to bring free school lunches to all students. 

The Reason for the Introduction of Free School Lunches

The progenitor to this program was brought on by the recent pandemic—students relied on meals provided by the school, but as schools shut down, their access to these meals was cut off. Then, as schools slowly reopened, Colorado school districts offered free lunches via waivers to relieve some of the financial pressure that many felt during the pandemic.

State officials saw a 10% – 40% rise in students across several districts partaking in school lunches during this period, then decided that it should be more permanent. Voters agreed—55.1% of Colorado citizens voted “yes” on Proposition FF: to create and fund the Healthy School Meals for All program. But where does the funding come from? The measure promises to generate more than $100 million annually by reducing tax breaks to households earning more than $300 thousand per year.

However, there is bound to be some confusion among parents, as some of their kids may have to fill out an application to opt-in for the free meals, while their siblings that attend other schools may not. This is because many Colorado schools are already participating in the Community Eligibility Provision, which has provided students with free meals since 2020.

All this said, not every school district in Colorado has guaranteed that they will participate in the Healthy School Meals for All program. If you live in Colorado and have a child attending public school, be sure to check with your school district and stay informed.

Leveling the Playing Field

Introducing a free meal program is helping to alleviate peer pressure and stigma against the less fortunate kids who rely on free lunches or cannot afford to buy a meal every day. Since every student, regardless of status, is eligible for a free meal, it levels the playing field in that aspect—no one worries about any child going hungry, at least while at school.

Hunger Free Colorado

GlendaRika Garcia works for Hunger Free Colorado, a nonprofit organization that seeks to end hunger and provide nutrition to children all over her state. As a mom of four teenage boys, she’s seen first-hand the positive impact the Healthy School Meals for All program has had on children.

“I think that the kids being able to eat for free at school is really important, for all families, all kids,” she said. “Kids can’t learn if they don’t have good nutrition.”

How Other States are Following Suit

Colorado isn’t the only state that chose to continue providing free lunches for students. Some states like Nevada, Vermont, and Massachusetts have also decided to extend their free lunch programs to the end of 2023, though some still need to pass bills to make it permanent. 

California and Maine were the first to pass measures similar to Colorado’s last year. In Arizona, meanwhile, officials have invested almost $7 million to extend their free school meal program, and it’s happening much faster—it’s set to launch its benefits for students this month!

Three Cheers for School Staff

The pandemic has been tough on all of us—but especially for those who are either in school, have kids, or have jobs at a school. Teachers, students, and their parents had to transition to virtual and online learning overnight, and they deserve major kudos for blazing through that adjustment so quickly. Suddenly, everyone was homeschooled, putting a lot of pressure on teachers and parents.

Another one of the pandemic’s lasting effects was on our supply chain, directly impacting the food supplied to schoolchildren and the staff that prepared it. We’re still processing the past few years, and while things are getting better, the pandemic has left a lasting mark on our history. The pandemic has taught us what incredible things teachers are willing to do to continue their work to educate young minds. They are passionate about teaching and learning, and their example should be held in the highest honor.

Educationworld.com

A former student shot through the doors of a Christian elementary school Monday and killed three children and three adults after elaborately planning the massacre by drawing out a detailed map and conducting surveillance of the building, police said.

The massacre at The Covenant School in Nashville was the latest in a series of mass shootings in a country that has grown increasingly unnerved by bloodshed in schools.

The victims included three 9-year-old children, the school’s top administrator, a substitute teacher and a custodian. Amid the chaos a familiar ritual played out: Panicked parents rushed to the school to see if their children were safe and tearfully hugged their kids, and a stunned community planned vigils for the victims.

“I was literally moved to tears to see this and the kids as they were being ushered out of the building,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said during one of several news conferences.

Police gave unclear information on the gender of the shooter, who police say was fatally shot by two responding officers at the school. For hours, police identified the shooter as a 28-year-old woman and eventually identified the person as Audrey Hale. Then at a late afternoon press conference, the police chief said that Hale was transgender. After the news conference, police spokesperson Don Aaron declined to elaborate on how Hale currently identified.

Drake did not give a specific motive when asked by reporters but gave chilling examples of the shooter’s prior planning for the targeted attack.

“We have a manifesto, we have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” he said. “We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”

He said in an interview with NBC News that investigators believe Hale had “some resentment for having to go to that school.”

The shooter gained entry by firing into glass doors on the building, shattering them, police later said in a tweet.

The shooter was armed with two “assault-style” weapons as well as a handgun, authorities said. At least two of them were believed to have been obtained legally in the Nashville area, according to the chief.

Police said a search of the shooter’s home turned up a a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun and other unspecified evidence.

The victims were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9 years old, and adults Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.

The website of The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school founded in 2001, lists a Katherine Koonce as the head of the school. Her LinkedIn profile says she has led the school since July 2016. Peak was a substitute teacher and Hill was a custodian, according to investigators.

Students held hands as they walked to school buses, which drove them to a nearby church to be reunited with their parents.

Rachel Dibble, who was at the church as families found their children, described the scene as everyone being in “complete shock.”

“People were involuntarily trembling,” said Dibble, whose children attend a different private school in Nashville. “The children … started their morning in their cute little uniforms, they probably had some Froot Loops and now their whole lives changed today.”

Communities around the U.S. has suffered through one mass killing after another in recent years, with school shootings taking an especially painful toll.

Recent tragedies nationwide include the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year; a first grader who shot his teacher in Virginia; and a shooting last week in Denver that wounded two administrators.

President Joe Biden, speaking at the White House on Monday, called the shooting a “family’s worst nightmare” and implored Congress again to pass a ban on certain semi-automatic weapons.

“It’s ripping at the soul of this nation, ripping at the very soul of this nation,” Biden said.

Biden later ordered the U.S. flag to be flown at half-staff on all federal buildings through March 31. He also spoke to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and Nashville Mayor John Cooper about the shooting, officials said.

Founded as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church — which is affiliated with the conservative evangelical Presbyterian Church in America — The Covenant School is located in the affluent Green Hills neighborhood just south of downtown Nashville that is home to the famed Bluebird Café – a spot typically beloved by musicians and songwriters.

The school has about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade, as well as roughly 50 staff members.

“Our community is heartbroken,” a statement from the school said. “We are grieving tremendous loss and are in shock coming out of the terror that shattered our school and church. We are focused on loving our students, our families, our faculty and staff and beginning the process of healing.”

Before Monday’s violence in Nashville, there had been seven mass killings at K-12 schools since 2006 in which four or more people were killed within a 24-hour period, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. In all of them, the shooters were males.

The database does not include school shootings in which fewer than four people were killed, which have become far more common in recent years. Just last week alone, for example, school shootings happened in Denver and the Dallas-area within two days of each other.

Monday’s tragedy unfolded over roughly 14 minutes. Police received the initial call about an active shooter at 10:13 a.m.

Officers began clearing the first story of the school when they heard gunshots coming from the second level, Aaron said during a news briefing. Police later said in a tweet that the shooter fired at arriving officers from a second-story window and had come armed with significant ammunition.

Two officers from a five-member team opened fire in response, fatally shooting the suspect at 10:27 a.m., Aaron said. One officer had a hand wound from cut glass.

Late Monday night, police released approximately two minutes of edited surveillance video showing the shooter’s car driving up to the school from multiple angles, including one in which children can be seen playing on swings in the background. Next an interior view shows glass doors to the school being shot out and the shooter ducking through one of the shattered doors.

More footage from inside shows the shooter walking through a school corridor holding a gun with a long barrel and walking into a room labeled “church office,” then coming back out. In the final part of the footage, the shooter can be seen walking down another long corridor with the gun drawn. The shooter is not seen interacting with anyone else on the video, which has no sound.

Aaron said there were no police officers present or assigned to the school at the time of the shooting because it is a church-run school.

Jozen Reodica heard the police sirens and fire trucks blaring from outside her office building nearby. As her building was placed under lockdown, she took out her phone and recorded the chaos.

“I thought I would just see this on TV,” she said. “And right now, it’s real.”

Nashville has seen its share of mass violence in recent years, including a Christmas Day 2020 attack where a recreational vehicle was intentionally detonated in the heart of Music City’s historic downtown, killing the bomber, injuring three others and forcing more than 60 businesses to close.

A reeling city mourned during multiple vigils Monday evening. At Belmont United Methodist Church, teary sniffling filled the background as vigil attendees sang, knelt in prayer and lit candles. They lamented the national cycle of violent and deadly shootings, at one point reciting together, “we confess we have not done enough to protect” the children injured or killed in shootings.

“We need to step back. We need to breathe. We need to grieve,” said Paul Purdue, the church’s senior pastor. “We need to remember. We need to make space for others who are grieving. We need to hear the cries of our neighbours.”

AP