Columbine school has 60 percent staff changes since shooting

LITTLETON, Colo. -- About 60 percent of the people on the staff at Columbine High have left since the school became the site of the nation's deadliest school shooting in 1999.

Only 58 of the 143 faculty members and staffers from 1999 are still at the Jefferson County school.

For the district as a whole, teacher turnover was only 11 percent annually from 1999 to 2001.

Candace Birch-Sterling, a Spanish teacher at Columbine for 14 years, transferred to another school a year after the shootings in which one teacher and 12 students were killed.

"I hated that the school I knew had been taken away from me. I didn't want to be an emotionally wounded teacher for the students," she said.

Columbine seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stormed the school April 20, 1999, killing 13 people before committing suicide. Twenty-three others were wounded.

The turnover at Columbine is typical in the aftermath of tragedy, says Steven M. Herman, an Indianapolis specialist on post-traumatic stress syndrome.

"One of the most common ways of coping is flight," Herman said.

"It is painful to be in the building, to be with people who shared the experience and see the reminders."

Among those whose chose to stay was choir director Leland Andres Jr., a Columbine graduate starting his 18th year at the school.

"When your house burns down, you rebuild it," Andres said. "This is home to me."