In the wake of Wednesday's school shooting in Oakland, parents are threatening to pull their students out of school and local leaders are calling on the governor to take action.
Since the start of the school year, parents say there have been security concerns on the King Estate campus that have been ignored.
"When you had a stabbing, for example, when you had a pistol whipping of a student, when you had a gun recovered at school, what did you think was going to happen in the future," said Mario Juarez, who has a child at Bay Tech Charter.
Oakland police confirm they arrested a suspect in August after a stabbing and gun incident on the campus.
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Juarez, who is also a parent advisor at Bay Tech, said the charter school was so concerned about the Oakland Unified School District's lack of action that it hired its own security guard.
An independent security company confirmed that guard was among the six people shot on Wednesday.
Juarez said the guard continued to try to save students after being hit in the leg.
"He's a hero," Juarez said. "He put his body in front of bullets so that those bullets didn’t go into kids, into the classroom."
Parents at Bay Tech and staff have been in meetings since Thursday, many threatening to not come back to the school because of the security challenges on the campus. They are also calling for the superintendent of the school district to step down.
NBC Bay Area contacted the school district to ask about the parents' accusations and if it made any changes after the earlier incidents. The district previously said it is reviewing its security protocol but declined to comment further.
"They didn’t do any additional protocols, they didn’t do anything to protect these babies," Juarez said. "Our sons and daughters were put in harm's way."
Juarez said one of the other victims, a student, was shot in the back four times and a carpenter working at Rudsdale at the time of the shooting is on life support.
Oakland Councilmember Noel Gallo is calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency on gun violence.
"We need all the support we can get from the highway patrol, the sheriff's department, the BART police," Gallo said.
He's also writing a letter to top leaders asking for more resources, including funding to invest in prevention, put police back in schools and explore tougher gun laws.
"It's definitely an emergency," he said. "How many more young people do I have to lose? How many more? The reality is you're talking about underserved communities."
The call for safety in schools is one parents and city leaders say will require everyone's help to achieve.
"We have to remember at the end of the day those are our children that are on the street," Gallo said.
