Posted on 12/20/2012 8:37:24 PM PST by narses
Rumors of a school shooting plot prompted three school districts to cancel Friday classes for about 20,000 students in Kootenai County.
Although police have not verified a real threat of violence, the persistent rumors rattled many students and parents, and attendance has dropped all week, officials said.
“The reason we’re canceling school is not because we think there is a credible threat but because the fear and the panic is just so palpable that we didn’t believe we could have a productive, calm day,” Coeur d’Alene Superintendent Hazel Bauman said.
Nerves have been raw since the Connecticut school massacre one week ago, and doomsday scenarios based on the end of the Mayan calendar today have only fueled gossip and worries.
“There’s just so much angst among our students and our parents, even though the rumors are unsubstantiated and there’s no credible threat,” Post Falls Superintendent Jerry Keane said. “The anxiety is extraordinary and we just feel like we can’t have a reasonable school day.”
School districts in other parts of the country were dealing with similar distractions. Schools in Michigan, Oklahoma and North Dakota were among those canceling classes to cool off rumored threats of violence.
Police in Fort Pierce, Fla., arrested a teen who they say posted a Facebook message threatening to “bring a gun to school tomorrow and shoot everyone.”
In North Idaho, the Coeur d’Alene School District was the first to announce it would cancel all school activities today, the last day before the holiday break.
The Post Falls and Lakeland districts quickly followed suit. The Kootenai Technical Education Campus in Rathdrum and Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy also are closed today.
City police and the sheriff’s office advised the district it would be best to cancel school, Bauman said.
“Already we’d seen a huge downturn in attendance in the last day or two and know that tomorrow would probably be even worse,” she said today.
“It’s our duty to have an environment that’s psychologically safe as well as physically safe,” Bauman added.
“I just hope that the holiday break will be time for us to restore some calm,” Bauman said.
In Post Falls, Keane said the decision was about much more than responding to rumors.
“It’s about what kind of peace of mind can our community have,” he said. “We’re in a lot different place than we were about a week ago in regards to school safety.”
Bauman said the decision was particularly difficult in the absence of any verification of a threat of gun violence.
“The hardest part is you hate to in some ways acquiesce to what might be just a tactic to create disruption and to cause fear,” she said.
The district’s staff and police worked hard to chase down any leads that might verify an actual threat, Bauman said. “And frankly there isn’t any.”
Rumors that someone was planning to bring a gun to a school today spread through hallways and in students’ Facebook posts. Coeur d’Alene police officers assigned to schools tried to track down the source of the rumors, spokeswoman Sgt. Christie Wood said.
“We have had our patrol officers do extra patrol of all school facilities this week,” Wood said. “We are hoping the Christmas break brings a stress break as well.”
Bauman said she already is weathering criticism for the call: “Are you going to close schools every time you get a threat? Absolutely not,” she said. “We get threats all the time. Kids, we know, think it’s a great little tactic to get out of school.”
That’s why she and other districts vow to make up the lost day. The Coeur d’Alene district will do it Feb. 15, the Friday before President’s Day, which had been a no-school day.
Michele Torres, a parent of two elementary school students in Coeur d’Alene, said she feels torn by the district’s decision. Her children were among many disappointed they’d miss holiday parties and activities planned for today.
“In light of everything that has been going on in our country, I understand their eagerness to be safe,” Torres said. But she also worries the decision will encourage some students to spread rumors in hopes of getting out of school.
“I know kids will be kids, but this is not acceptable at all,” Torres said. “It just makes me sad that this is what it’s coming to.”
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“[Assault weapons’] menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi- automatic assault weapons —anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun— can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.” Josh Sugarmann, executive director of New Right Watch, spokesman for the National Coalition to Ban Handguns, “Assault Weapons and Accessories in America,” policy report of New Right Watch and the Education Fund to End Handgun Violence, September 1988
“Self-interest has no place in society” Sandy Cuney, Handgun Control Incorporated, 5/6/94
“Our main agenda is to have all guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It does not matter if you have to distort facts or even lie.” Sarah Brady, Handgun Control, Inc., The National Educator, January, 1994
“If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an out right ban, picking up every one of them... ‘Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,’ I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren’t here.” Dianne Feinstein, Senator, CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes,” February 5, 1995
ping
“everything that has been going on in our country,”
Oh I know; we’ve been having carpet-bombings all over our cities all week. It’s been terrible.
you know it is Christmas next week....the teachers could always use an extra day on top of their 10 days or whatever they have off.....what’s the problem?
Hey, what do you know.. The schools become victim of their own refusal to teach children to take ‘responsibility’ for what they say.. Just let them make threat after threat and keep the schools closed all year long. America would be better off with children NOT in the union’s ‘indoctrination farms’ anyway.
I'm beginning to despise my fellow Americans... for real.
Regrettably, me too.
When I was in High School (late '60s, early '70s, East Coast) bomb threats were an every other day thing.
For a while, we were assembled outside and the usual suspects slipped off to smoke or go into town. Any time someone wanted a day or half-day off, there'd be another one. Not long after that started, the policy changed. Once the gymnasium was "cleared", we were packed in there until the rest of the building was deemed OK. I'm not sure how safe that would have been in the event there had actually been an explosive device which detonated, but that was the way it was dealt with.
Of course, any terrorist who was aware of that policy could have used it against the students, but since the ongoing unrest was racial, and the student body roughly 50/50, they'd have had both sides to answer to.
Anyhow, the students who wanted to would game the system, and no doubt will be doing so now.
The inherent weakness in that is that the cry of "wolf" will some day be real.
Nothing less than a capable defense against an armed maniac will be effective.
from a friend who works in a gun store, from Thursday post: THERE ARE NO GUNS LEFT TO ORDER FROM MY DISTRIBUTORS!!!!
They are sold out of everything, except for a very few single action revolvers. I even had to order a couple of neutered, emasculated komiefornia versions with bill klinton magazines to get anything. Ammo? none left, not even any .22lr. If the bastard in chief wanted to put more guns in the hands of everyday, normal good Americans, he has succeeded. School teachers, accountants, truck drivers, home makers, doctors, firemen, you name it....they are BUYING guns and ammo in large quantity, and two thirds are first time gun buyers.
“Hey, what do you know.. The schools become victim of their own refusal to teach children to take ‘responsibility’ for what they say.. Just let them make threat after threat and keep the schools closed all year long. America would be better off with children NOT in the union’s ‘indoctrination farms’ anyway.”
What they say or do for that matter. Today’s(and yesterday’s) Public school & university trys to teach students obedience to the State, leftist ideology & values and very little else.
Morality, right & wrong, critical thinking, logical reasoning, Constitutionalism, to say nothing of reading & math are slipping right out the door.
Our children really would be much better off if their education was left to their parents. We can start by abandoning Public Schools and instead moving to a per-student voucher system. A system which should extended to public universities as well under the more identifiable name of Scholarship.
That means kill all State grants and Tax preferences to Public schools & universality’s. Instead put every penny of that money into a scholarship & vouchers to be given to each and every citizen child in the State. Let their parents choose the school.
This is not true accountability for the Educators but its a lot closer to accountability and due to its similarity with existing systems of scholarship & private universities it will sell a lot better. Just tell people your investing the money in the students rather the educators!
PS: In regard to universality reformation of the accreditation industry will require serous and ongoing scrutiny.
We live in a land in which the majority of the population are stupid, stupid people. And it ain't going to get any better. They will continue to vastly outnumber us. The die is cast.
Seeing the states listed (Idaho, Michigan, OK and North Dakota), I thought the rumors were “guns are selling out” and they let them go home early so they could buy some new guns before they were all gone.
“The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has turned into a society of irrational, mindless wussies.”
Such is the self-destructive problem of Democracy as apposed to the Constitutional republic which we once had.
“I’m beginning to despise my fellow Americans... for real.”
I despise large sections of the present & past population, although not for their emotional overreaction in times like this but for their well considered actions & choices to wage war upon me and my rights, rather than respect the terms of a finite Constitution of civil Republican government, on which we agreed to be united.
On this I justly regard my union with them dissolved by all moral right. It is now mealy a matter of finding means and opportunity to sever my connection with this parasitical horde and assume among the powers of the earth the Separate but Equal station among the nations of the world.
In the mean time I will spare no opportunity to stab them in the Back as they have stabbed me in an effort to make them as unhappy with their union with me as I am with them. Wars end because they are a very much unhappy state of existence. Oppression continues because for the oppressor it is most beneficial, at least until the oppressed races the cost of that oppression.
It is therefore my Job to see to it that the they:
1: Understand the cost of the war we now wage upon each-other.
2: Understand their part in the matter.
3: Desire to end the war, and live in peace.
“The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has turned into a society of irrational, mindless wussies.”
Such is the self-destructive problem of Democracy as apposed to the Constitutional republic which we once had.
“I’m beginning to despise my fellow Americans... for real.”
I despise large sections of the present & past population, although not for their emotional overreaction in times like this but for their well considered actions & choices to wage war upon me and my rights, rather than respect the terms of a finite Constitution of civil Republican government, on which we agreed to be united.
On this I justly regard my union with them dissolved by all moral right. It is now mealy a matter of finding means and opportunity to sever my connection with this parasitical horde and assume among the powers of the earth the Separate but Equal station among the nations of the world.
In the mean time I will spare no opportunity to stab them in the Back as they have stabbed me in an effort to make them as unhappy with their union with me as I am with them. Wars end because they are a very much unhappy state of existence. Oppression continues because for the oppressor it is most beneficial, at least until the oppressed races the cost of that oppression.
It is therefore my Job to see to it that they:
1: Understand the cost of the war we now wage upon each-other.
2: Understand their part in the matter.
3: Desire to end the war, and live in peace.
Hey narses - I must be on two of your ping lists. I always get multiple pings. Can you take me off of one of them? Thanks!
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