Schools dealing with hoax threats; 1 sheriff says $20K wasted investigating rumors

(TND) — In the aftermath of the Georgia school shooting about two weeks ago, other schools nationwide have dealt with unfounded threats that tax resources and time.

Hoax threats have popped up in Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and elsewhere.

A Florida sheriff decried spending over $20,000 recently investigatinghoax school threats.

“This is absolutely out of control, and it ends now,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood told reporters. “Fifty-four and counting tips came into (suspicious activity reporting tool) Fortify Florida last night. OK, that means investigators in the school district have been running around the clock to investigate these tips, which are all turning out to be false.”

Broken Arrow schools in Oklahoma sent parents an email Friday about false rumors of violence.

“Despite many different rumors, there have been no specific details, actual evidence, or corroborative information,” the email to parents read. “We believe we are experiencing part of a nationwide trend of false accusations and misinformation intended to disrupt our educational processes and instill fear in citizens across the US.”

The K-12 School Shooting Database tracks swatting calls at schools and shows there were more nationwide in September and October of last year than the rest of the school year. That database doesn’t include fresh data for this young school year.

“I'd be curious to see as data comes in kind of where things stand,” F. Chris Curran, director of the Education Policy Research Center at the University of Florida, said Monday.

“But I think we do know that when it comes to school safety, whether it's threatening incidents or even kind of the perpetration of them, there is unfortunately sometimes kind of a copycat effect,” he said.

When tragedy strikes, as it did at Apalachee High School in Georgia this month, attention rises to school safety, he said.

Uncredible threats can come from students, but they can also come from people who might not even live in a community but want to induce chaos in a vulnerable place like a school, Curran said.

And such threats can be taxing for schools.

“It can take a lot of effort from a school and a lot of resources,” he said.

A swatting incident can be extreme, where a school is locked down amid a heavy police presence.

Those can be scary for students and cause major disruptions to learning.

They can also pull police resources away from real emergencies.

“Luckily, those incidents are probably more limited of the kind of routine day-to-day sorts of threats that schools are dealing with,” said Curran, a former middle school teacher.

Schools have established procedures for dealing with threats or perceived threats.

Sometimes they have to determine the intentionality of an apparent threat from a student that might be just an expression of anger or a misguided attempt at humor.

“The educators and others, as they become aware of that, they need to increasingly feel pressure to take that seriously and try to ensure that it is just that, not a legitimate threat,” Curran said.

Many schools now have threat assessment teams, he said.

Some larger districts have “command centers almost” at the district level with dedicated staff to monitor social media and try to determine which threats are real and which are a hoax.

Schools are both reactive and proactive in their approaches to school safety, Curran said.

But he said sometimes overlooked proactive approaches are arguably more important for maintaining safety. Those can be things like guidance counselors working with students, teachers building strong relationships with their pupils, and clubs that are intended to make school a welcoming place.

But security elements, like fences, locked doors and school police officers, have their place.

Curran said balancing security with minimal disruptions to education is a challenge.

“I think you'll hear people compare some schools to prisons,” he said.

Roughly a quarter of teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center said they’ve experienced a gun-related lockdown during the last school year.

Department of Education data shows 131 people were killed and 197 were wounded in active-shooter incidents between 2000 and 2022 at the nation’s elementary and secondary schools.

And CNN tracking shows 33 school shootings on K-12 grounds so far in 2024.

“As we see a tragedy like a school shooting occur, you as a school leader or a district leader, you don't want to be the person that dismissed the warning signs to that,” Curran said.

But he maintains that schools remain generally very safe places, particularly compared to some environments that some students may experience outside of school.

Curran said children should be reassured that going to school is safe.

“But at the same time, I think we also have to recognize that we're grappling with a problem nationwide with gun violence, that it's more than just schools,” he said.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy recently issued an advisory on firearm violence, saying it poses an urgent threat to the health and well-being of our nation.

Firearm violence has become the No. 1 cause of death among children and adolescents, more than car accidents or drug overdoses, Murthy said.