Shaw deals with news of Betts's death

Principal Brian Betts walks with one of his students in 2008. (Bill O'Leary/Post)

A day after police announced that Shaw Middle School Principal Brian Betts was murdered after meeting suspects on a phone-sex chat line, students and faculty at the school said the revelations didn’t change their feelings about their beloved principal.

Tuesday is the final day of DC-CAS testing, the annual standardized exams that help measure academic progress in the city. The tests were rescheduled after Betts was discovered shot at his house April 15. Kim Douglas, Shaw’s acting principal, said that students would go straight into exams Wednesday, and that in the afternoon teachers would discuss the arrests and the apparent circumstances of the murder in their classrooms.

“We’re going to have teachers handle it in class, but they’ll all be reading off the same sheet of music,” Douglas said. She said that the school has calmed since the initial shock of loss – tears in the hallway have dried up, teachers have returned their focus to class work – and that the arrests won’t change that.

“Brian was an awesome principal,” she said. The details of his final night have nothing to do with that, she said. “It’s not like it’s going to change anything.”

STORY: Betts met suspects on sex line, police say

PHOTOS: Students, colleagues mourn death

TIMELINE: The Brian Betts case

-- Michael Birnbaum