Thursday, January 31, 2008
Back to Class
Important Evacuation Notice Update (January 31, 2008 - 12: 05 pm): The Upper Nazareth Police and fire departments along with the Pennsylvania State Police have completed a search of the high school facility and found no evidence of any explosive devices. All students have returned to the high school for the remainder of the instructional day.
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10 comments:
I go to Nazareth Middle School and it was scarey becuase all the high schoolers where here and it was crazy. Plus most of my friends go there
According to my middle school students, it sounded like mass chaos.
And for some unknown reason, because of events at the high school middle school students did not get report cards...I know this might sound minor, but, I just cannot as a parent understand how the high school being evacuated has anything to do with report cards for the middle school students not going home.
anonymous 6:50 AM,
Are you kidding me?
We have a bomb threat in the HS, it is evacuated, and the only concern you can think of is why the MS report cards didn't get handed out?
What about the fact that, from what I heard from my child, this was written on the wall of a bathroom. What about the concern that this was most likely done by a student?
Why aren't we talking about what would drive a troubled student to do this? What about the larger discussion of the number of troubled students in our district, such as the ones that cut themselves? From what I understand, there are quite a few.
These are the things we should be talking about, not why report cards come home. If you are that concerned, check the parent portal.
Reasons why middle school report cards might not have gone out:
There was a bomb threat.
3/4 of high school students and staff were evacuated to middle school for most of the morning.
Phones rang non-stop.
Swarms of parents showed up at middle school to rescue their child.
The staff dealt with it as professionals. They kept their cool. So did the kids.
Maybe report cards weren't sent as scheduled. Ya know what? You'll live.
My guess about the report card "problem" is that there was a tremendous draw on personnel at the middle school yesterday (and also at Shafer). The auditorium was filled with at least half of the high school students (the others at Shafer), the lobby was filled with the parents wanting to sign them out - and they still had to conduct regular operations with their own students.
We should indeed be concerned with the individual who wrote the message. It's one thing to get out of a test with a fire alarm, quite another to do it with a bomb threat, and it may be for more troubling reasons.
Also, the evacuation response needs some thought on how effective it was, and wasn't. There was definitely some confusion all around - should the kids go home or stay put, could they use their cells - if so, what do they tell their parents. The automated response call and the website were great but need quicker, up-to-the-minute updates. Just stating there is a bomb threat and that the building has been evacuated is cause for concern in many parents. Waiting for over 2 hours for an update or details causes major concern.
To lessen confusion next time(if there is one, God forbid), it would be really helpful for the parents to know what their first response should be - go get their child(ren) or sit tight? If this information is out there already, where could one find it? Does the district have a formal evacuation plan in place?
Parent portal, by the way, is an excellent way to stay informed about grades.
I am a parent of a junior at the high school. I would like to know why it took almost 45 minutes for the school to be evacuated? Why are fire drills faster? Why was half the school sent to Shafer and half to the middle school? Why wasn't Shafer evacuated too since it is right across the street? Why were teachers confiscating cell phones from students who just wanted to let their parents know they were ok? I thought in emergency situations cell phone use was permitted? If things were so organized why did the students have to stand outside the middle school while the teachers screamed names to get their classes together? My child spent an entire day in school, whether at the middle school or the high school and now is being told she must make up 1/2 day on prom day! Whether she goes to prom or not, she should not be penalized! I really think the district needs to rethink their emergency plans! I also find it kind of funny how nothing of this whole incident was mentioned on WFMZ news! It's amazing how Nazareth School District keeps important news like this such a secret!
To the parent of the middle school children who did not get their report cards: I had a verrrry long post all ready to go just in response to yours, but I changed my mind. I cannot educate you. I cannot make you aware. I cannot get you to think of others before yourself. So, instead, this is all I have to say to you: Don't sweat the small stuff. Those report card grades would pale in comparison to the tragedy that may have ensued if this threat turned out to be a real bomb.
On another note, in response to the events of yesterday, As the parent of 2 high schoolers, I am disturbed by the fact that there were threatening scrawlings on more than one bathroom wall (or so I am told). I don't know much about bomb searches, but it's hard for me to imagine that in 2 hours they could do a complete sweep of the entire school...lockers and all? Sending those kids back to the high school in my opinion was a terrible decision. I feel they should have found a way to dismiss the students from the middle school and elementary school with an automated message to the parents who pick up, and a system for the busses to run that route instead... As for the kids who walk...well, they could walk. Why they sent them back to school is beyond me. Frankly, I was nervous standing in the line to sign my kids out. I can honestly say, I found myself wondering "what if"?
I also found it disturbing that I had to get updates from my children via text messages and hushed calls rather than from the school's automated message system. Not to mention that some kids were forbidden to use their cells and/or had them confiscated by a teacher or two - are you kidding me!!??. We waited two hours to hear news. Back in the "old days" we didn't have the technology we have today, and bomb threats at school were high school pranks. Things have changed.
With today's situations, ie: internet access to all kinds of scary ideas and devices, Columbine, etc. the school cannot expect parents to idly sit by and wait for an update when the school gets around to providing one. So, please, teachers, put yourselves in our place and look the other way when students place calls to their parents in these situations.
Guess this was a long post afterall!
Concerned Mom,
Yes, it is very troubling that it took so long for them to evacuate the school and should have been immediate.
As for dividing up the kids between the two schools, simple logistics. Neither school is large enough to take in the entire HS population, so splitting them only makes sense.
As for the cell phones, if you think back to the train bombings in Madrid (Spain) a while back, cell phones were used to trigger the explosives, so my guess is that was the rationale behind not allowing them to be used at that time.
I was surprised the WFMZ failed to cover any of this. However, if you had looked at the Morning Call and Express Times web sites, they posted the stories within a very short time after I received my automated call from the district.
Hopefully the district officials will use this as a learning experience to improve both their emergency plans as well as execution of them.
I think the School District did a good job. I received a robo phone call about the evacuation( even though i dont have anyone in HS) and one when it was over. The communication part was well done.
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