"Fear, saddened, disbelief," Jessica Gunter said.
As a parent of Rusk ISD, those were the emotions Jessica Gunter felt when she heard about an alleged assault at Rusk High School.
"What happened is absolutely ridiculous I hate that it happened, we are going to do whatever we can to keep it from happening again, no excuse for that, on a school campus, at Rusk ISD or anywhere else," Rusk ISD Superintendent Grey Burton said.
Superintendent Grey Burton is addressing what happened on campus head on, saying it's the districts priority to keep students safe.
"You can rest assure that when they’re at our campus that we’re going to watch for them, we’re going to take care of them and we’re going to make sure they’re leaving there in better shape than they got there. That should not be a concern, and I apologize this event ever happened," Burton said.
Superintendent Burton confirms the alleged assault took place in the administrative office and he acknowledged both principals were not present in the room.
Burton assured parents the principals owned up to their mistakes and are taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
"There are a lot of safety concerns throughout the community, I do feel like rusk is a great school, I haven’t heard anything negative about rusk until now so that’s why I felt inclined to come to the meeting," Gunter said.
As a mother, Gunter says a change she wants to see is heightened security.
"It brought a lot of safety concerns up, it brought a lot of issues that I didn’t realize the school was having with violence and the more I’ve questioned around town, the more I realized Rusk does have a violence problem and it’s not being addressed," Gunter said.
As concern about violence at school grows, district leaders recognize the need for proactive communication to address issues before they escalate.
"We want to get more specific on with students, do a better job of bringing parents in early and making sure that they’re aware of some of the things that are going on before it escalates to something of this nature so it’s going to be more communication from us," Burton said.