Central Middle School resumed a normal school day Wednesday after Columbus police determined there was no credible safety threat in a social media post reported as a tip.
But nearly a quarter of the student body did not attend school Wednesday after a parental social media frenzy about safety concerns at the school.
As of Wednesday morning, around 200 Central kids were reported absent, with many parents posting on the school’s social media account that they would not send their child to school because of concern about the threat and that they needed more information. Any time a parent chooses to keep their child home for a safety reason, including weather-related, it is an excused absence, school officials said.
Columbus police described this investigation as different from other school threat notifications as all of the information was third hand. The investigation began after a staff member told school officials that a student had sent a message on social media about a potential threat Wednesday to Central.
However, Lt. Matt Harris, Columbus Police Department spokesman, said police never found the original social media message in question.
“All of this was third party information,” Harris said, describing it as one person telling another person, who told another, but no one having access to the actual message. “We were never able to determine if an actual threat was made,” he said.
In additional to CPD officers, school resource officers and detectives were called in to investigate Tuesday night, Harris said. But after multiple interviews with people who said there was a threat, no threat could be found or validated on social media.
“We understand the concern, but we deal with facts,” Harris said. CPD closed the investigation after interviews were held and officers determined that no credible threat existed.
The department also sent out a communication asking that parents and families refrain from spreading more rumors and third hand information that could not and had not been verified.
“If we are going to err, we are going to err on the side of safety,” Harris said. “But nothing credible as far as a threat was found. I don’t know how much more clear we could make it. It was vague third party information that could not be substantiated.”
Additional school resource officers were at Central Wednesday to reassure families that students were safe.
“We will hear things often. We have 11,500 kids (in the school corporation) and their parents who are talking about things and occasionally a threat will be brought up,” said Jim Roberts, BCSC superintendent. “We always try to gather as many facts as possible first before getting things out, whether it be in an E-alert or through social media or some other messaging system.”
Communication methods
Roberts said the corporation tries to couch the communication methods used based upon the severity of the situation. He said facts come first, then the urgency and severity of the situation are considered to determine how the district relays the message.
Columbus police issued a statement on its Facebook page about the investigation at 9:15 p.m. Tuesday. In the statement, officers said they had not confirmed any credible threats at Central, but that several rumors, and false and inaccurate information was being shared online about the incident, said Lt. Matt Harris, Columbus Police Department spokesman.
BCSC also issued a statement on social media Tuesday in response to the police department’s statement: “BCSC is working closely with CPD and our school resource officers on this situation. We will update our schools and staff should more information be communicated to us from our local law-enforcement partners.”
In a Facebook post at 7:07 a.m. Wednesday, BCSC said, “Central Middle School expects another good day and to see additional SROs (school resource officers) this morning. No credible threat was identified.”
Several parents of Central Middle School students expressed frustration with BCSC on social media postings, asking why an emergency E-alert had not been sent to parents notifying them of the threat, and giving specifics.
Emergency E-alerts, according to the district’s website, are sent by the BCSC district administration when there will be a school closing, delay or early dismissal or if there is an emergency announcement. Anyone can sign up to receive the instant alerts via text message and email.
“It’s very upsetting,” said Jessica Olson, a parent of an eighth grade student at Central. “We trust the corporation to keep our children safe and give us the important information; not for us to hear via social media.”
“What happened to the text and email alerts?????” Kim Furuyama wrote in a Facebook comment Wednesday. “They could have called an E-learning day so they could still get their school credit and the kids would be safe! So many parents, including me, came back to pick up their kid. The phone was ringing off the hook with angry parents not being directly alerted about this mess.”
Preventing panic
Roberts said in an attempt to not create widespread panic or fear, BCSC tries to buffer and share information appropriately. In a case like the threat made Tuesday, Roberts said administrators provide that information to the proper authorities so an investigation into the credibility of the threat can be determined.
“During the evening last night, we did go ahead and put a social media post out that there was some information going on and we repeated that at 7 o’clock this morning,” Robert said. “We did not use an E-alert because we are sensitive to the possibility of desensitizing people to that system and that when a E-alert goes out, we have an urgent and critical, serious message to get out.”
Roberts said that while a threat made to a school and the safety of students is serious, given all the information that BCSC and Columbus police had, it was deemed not credible.
The social media posts, Roberts said, were created to reassure parents and families that the school is safe and additional officers were on site, not because they believed something was going to occur, but as a reassurance of safety for students.
“That decision (to use social media) is really simply based upon not having found any evidence of credible information that we thought needed to be shared through an E-alert,” Roberts said.
The corporation is working to find a balance between sending an alert out if nothing has changed in the daily routine, or whether they wait until something in the information changes, such as a school cancellation. Otherwise, they share the message via social media.
Moving forward, Roberts said the corporation will continue to identify methods to improve its communication efforts with parents. He said he believes overall everything was done correctly in this situation, including the investigation and communication, but said the district is always challenged to find ways to improve.
“How we continue to work with facts, pace ourselves appropriately in terms of how quickly information comes out and the medium from which it comes, those three parts are important,” Roberts said. “Given the facts of the case, we believe we did communicate correctly, but any time somebody asks, ‘Why,?’ we have to ask ourselves that same thing and try to understand if we can do it better.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”How to sign up for emergency e-alerts” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Emergency E-alerts are sent by the BCSC administration when there will be a school closing, delay or early dismissal or if there is an emergency announcement.
To sign up for emergency E-alerts, go to bcsc.parentlink.net/main/login/new-account-sign-up.
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