Districts take action after threats
Area superintendents check in on students, school staff after rash of incidents
DANBURY — Following several shooting and bomb threats across school districts in the greater Danbury area last week, local superintendents are checking in on students and staff, and mobilizing support teams to work with their school communities.
The surge in threats occurs just two weeks before the ninth anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed 26 people, including 20 children, in 2012.
On the same day that New Milford police investigated a possible threat on Instagram and a Meriden high school went into lockdown after two students posted a video brandishing prop guns, a 15-yearold student at Oxford High School in Michigan gunned down four of his classmates in the country’s most
recent mass school shooting tragedy.
Then, this past Friday, at least three Connecticut high schools were shut down due to threats or perceived threats.
Danbury High School ended school early after two threats, ultimately determined ‘not credible,’ were made. Near the coastline, Norwalk High School and Norwalk P-Tech students were also evacuated Friday following a bomb threat that police eventually ruled a hoax. Hamden High School, which was closed Friday due to threats of gun violence Thursday night, remains closed Monday and Tuesday due to a second threat.
Brookfield’s school climate teams, “who have their ears and eyes on the pulse of the school,” have been asked to have a conversation about what they’re hearing at their respective schools and report back to administration, according to Superintendent John Barile.
While there is no formal training or scheduled conversations at the moment, Barile spoke with Brookfield’s police chief who advised the district to “make sure school crisis teams are at the ready” Monday, according to a message sent from Barile to climate team leaders.
Newtown’s superintendent, Lorrie Rodrigue, said that their priority in light of recent national and local news is to support the school community. This means utilizing support staff and administrative teams for those who might be struggling with recent events or the quickly approaching Sandy Hook anniversary.
“As you can imagine, this is always a difficult time of year for our staff, students, and families in Newtown,” Rodrigue wrote.
Friday’s incident has heightened nerves among Danbury teachers, said Erin Daly, a thirdgrade teacher and president of NEA Danbury, the teachers’ union.
“It is a time where everyone is kind of on edge and has a lot of anxiety and trepidation about being in school,” she said.
On Monday, however, the high school’s school-based health center had not yet seen any students or teachers coming in to talk about the incident, according to Karen London, a clinical social worker from the Connecticut Institute for Communities, Inc., which runs the high school’s center.
Daly said the union has worked to ensure that teachers have the support they need.
“My role is just to just make sure they have the resources they need and getting them the supports, whether it’s outsourcing to different agencies if they need, or making sure they have the opportunity to debrief and decompress about it, or just making sure within the school they have resources to talk about it, or express any concerns they have with administration, and make sure administration are valuing those concerns,” she said.
Daly said the superintendent communicated well with her on Friday, and the district did a good job deciding what to do as information evolved.
“From a leadership perspective and from a union leader perspective, I was very happy with the way the district handled things,” Daly said.
Danbury’s school administration did not respond for comment.
Moving forward
At least one district is launching continued teacher training in light of recent events.
On Tuesday, Bethel teachers will be attending a training called ‘Lessons Learned from Parkland’ that includes training on warning signs, profiles of potential aggressors, and proactive strategies, a letter to parents from Superintendent Christine Carver said.
Carver sent the letter Monday to address the recent out-of-district threats and violence in Michigan, and to remind parents of the safety protocol and policies in place. In an interview, she said teachers already have frequent trainings over the years.
“We use this training to proactively provide our students with interventions and use it to develop our school-wide climate and security plans,” Carver wrote.
The district is not currently holding assemblies due to COVID-19 and Carver said she wanted to be cautious due to the frequency with which ‘copycat’ threats are made in jest.
Copycat threats caused more than 100 Michigan schools to shut down Friday following the shooting. A similar trend is being observed in Connecticut.
“Unfortunately the amount of students who are making threats, which in most instances are not credible, are more frequent than you think,” she told parents.
“Regardless of our perceived intent of the threat, we handle them in the same manner.”
Are the kids alright?
For many high-schoolers, school shootings across the country have been a common occurrence throughout their lifetime, Karen London pointed out.
Since 1999, when 12 students and a teacher were massacred at Columbine High School in Colorado, there have been at least a dozen mass shooting events at schools across the country, including this most recent one in Michigan.
Education Week, which began tracking shootings on K-12 school properties in 2018, found that there were 24 school shootings that year and in 2019. Last year, there were 10, despite most districts’ fluctuation between remote and hybrid learning structures.
“This is one of the things they worry about in adolescence,” London said, referring to the frequency at which school shootings make national headlines.
“I think that’s such a remarkable thing that kids are called upon to act like this is a normal part of life,” she added.
Although students and staff were nervous on Friday, London said the administration handled the situation well, keeping everyone calm.
Bethel’s Carver noted that preCOVID, student stress and anxiety levels were high, exacerbated in part, she thinks, by social media. This has only gotten worse in the past two years, she said, especially this year.
“Everything seems to be amplified,” she said. “Mean behavior, social media, pranks. It’s tiktok challenges, it’s all kinds of things.”