An Ashland University researcher says back-to-back bomb threats at area schools are, unfortunately, becoming the norm.
“They’re happening across the country at a rate of eight to 10 a day,” said Amy Klinger, an associate professor of educational administration at Ashland University and program director for the nonprofit Educator’s School Safety Network.
In Portage and Summit counties, two schools found bomb threats written on restroom walls this week: one in a girls’ restroom at Kimpton Middle School in Stow on Thursday night and another on a Kent Roosevelt High School boys’ restroom wall Friday morning.
K-9 police units didn’t find explosives at either school. Still, the threats resulted in a band concert being canceled at Kimpton and students being sent home from Kent Roosevelt, school officials reported.
Klinger said these incidents are not out of the ordinary.
Her research showed there’s been a spike in the number of bomb threats reported in the United States. From October to January, more than 745 bomb threats against schools were reported across the nation.
“And we know we didn’t get them all. That 745 is an underreported figure,” she said. “We know of times when a school didn’t do anything with a threat because it was not even remotely credible.”
The 745 threats in her research findings were the ones media covered, Klinger said. There’s no database that tracks bomb threats to schools. In addition, each individual threat may have left entire school districts closed.
There are two main kinds of threats, she said. The first is students calling or writing threats, most commonly to have classes cancelled. The other is “swatting,” the act of a prankster attempting to rally a SWAT team, sometimes by using electronic means to make mass threats via phone to many places at once.
Very few threats result in a detonation — but Klinger said schools should and do treat every threat as legitimate.
“Schools are in a really difficult position. What are you going to do: ignore it? You can’t ignore it,” she said. “But every time you cancel classes, you’re setting yourself up for a another one. So we need to be trying to figure out a way to reduce the number of bomb threats.”
The nonprofit she heads is one of the solutions, she said. The Educator’s School Safety Network provides training to teachers and administrators so they can handle bomb threats at schools in a similar way to how firefighters handle them at malls and other public locations.
“This is a school problem as much as it’s a problem at shopping malls or elsewhere,” she said. “The numbers prove that.”
Local school officials agreed.
Kent City Schools Superintendent George Joseph said the police and K-9 dogs were called to the school immediately after a threat was discovered at about 7:45 a.m. Friday. The school was put into lockdown at about 9:40 a.m. while the dogs searched. About an hour later, administrators opted to send students home so a more thorough search could be conducted.
“I was hoping we wouldn’t have to evacuate, but we just wanted to make sure,” Joseph said. “Safety comes first.”
Stow-Munroe Falls School District handled the Kimpton threat similarly, according to the district’s Facebook page.
“We do not take these situations lightly,” a Facebook message reads, “and always err on the side of caution when it comes to the safety of our students.”
Nick Glunt can be reached at 330-996-3565 or nglunt@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickGluntABJ.