Threats at schools test crisis teams
Alerting parents fast is a key factor
Amid nationwide jitters over school security, two recent threats of violence have put Tewksbury's crisis planning to the test.
Neither a bomb threat at John W. Wynn Middle School last Monday nor a threatening message and suspicious device at the high school the previous Friday resulted in any injuries.
But in a district that is among the best-prepared in this region to handle threats of violence, officials responded by calling in bomb-sniffing dogs and regional public-safety specialists. They also held a public forum Wednesday, when school and safety officials informed parents about the incidents.
"Parents consider their children their most precious commodity, and they certainly don't want to send them to a school where there's a potential for violence," said Police Chief Alfred Donovan. "In the wake of Virginia Tech, we have to take everything seriously."
One area that school officials began studying last week is how to communicate with parents quickly during a crisis. Superintendent Christine McGrath said she is exploring e-mail options as well as services that deliver recorded messages to students' home phones. McGrath said she had notified parents about the recent incidents in letters sent home with students, but received some criticism for the low-tech approach.
"We live in a technology-rich environment where people have an expectation of a more rapid means of communication than a message coming home in a notice," McGrath said in an interview.
The speed of communication was a factor in the April 16 tragedy at Virginia Tech, where a student shot 32 people to death and then killed himself in a campus building in Blacksburg, Va. Campus officials were criticized for not using technology such as text messaging, typed messages sent by cellphones, to alert students as the shootings continued.
In Tewksbury, the recent incidents began April 27, at about 10 a.m., when a student noticed a handwritten message on the wall of a first-floor boys' locker room at Tewksbury Memorial High School. According to McGrath, the message said "pain would be inflicted upon someone" and referred to a bomb.
After consulting members of the regional School Threat Assessment Response System team, school and public safety officials determined the threat was too vague to require an evacuation of students. But administrators brought in bomb-sniffing police dogs.
Before the dogs had completed their tour, at 1:40 p.m., concerns escalated when a smashed battery was found surrounded by a spilled liquid in a secluded corridor. Students were released at the regular dismissal time of 1:47 p.m., and members of the State Police Bomb Squad arrived at 3 p.m.
Donovan, the police chief, said state investigators worried that the liquid was an accelerant, such as gasoline, and that the battery was a chemically reactive device. Results from the state crime laboratory that came back early last week determined that the liquid was not flammable, but did not specify what it was.
Last Sunday, police were contacted by a high school parent who said his son had been involved with two others in smashing what the crime lab identified as a size D battery. Donovan declined to identify the students but said police were determining whether the handwritten locker room threat was linked to their actions.
According to Donovan, the boys say the two incidents are not related but have not explained why they threw the battery against the wall repeatedly until it broke apart.
Police are awaiting the results of a handwriting analysis, Donovan said, and school officials are taking disciplinary actions against the students. In addition, video footage from a security camera is being reviewed by technology professionals from the school and police departments.
High school students were told to leave backpacks at home Monday, and two police officers were at the high school to ensure safety and enforce the no-backpack request. Donovan said more than 100 of the school's 1,200 students were absent that day, and police fielded hundreds of calls from concerned parents.
"A threat spreads through the community like wildfire," he said, "and parents keep their kids home from school because they're concerned. Whether it's real or not, they're not going to take a chance."
Though the high school experienced no further incidents Monday, the Wynn School day ended in disruption.
Just before school dismissal at about 2 p.m., a note saying, "I have a bomb," signed with the initials "JFK" was discovered in the second-floor boys' bathroom.
While school buses waited to take children home at the end of the day, administrators swiftly locked all doors allowing no one to enter or exit the building. A few minutes later, they evacuated the students onto the buses, and bomb-sniffing dogs swept through the building.
Internet communications sent from students' homes that evening contributed to additional fears, said Donovan, when police learned of text messages that claimed the bomb threat was a genuine warning from someone meaning to do harm.
The claims were unfounded, he said, noting that "JFK" is an instant messaging abbreviation for "just [expletive] kidding."
After visiting about eight households and questioning students in their homes, Tewksbury detectives determined that the Internet dialogues originated from someone who had been "joking around" to impress others, said Donovan.
Fire Captain Michael Sitar, a member of the school district security team, considered one of the most progressive public school crisis-planning teams in the region, stressed the seriousness of the incidents, noting that any threat inside a school building is not taken lightly. "Ever since Columbine, people don't take stuff like this as a joke," he said.
In April 1999, two students at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colo., went on a shooting spree, killing 13 and wounding at least 21, before killing themselves.
Last fall, several schools across the region upgraded their crisis plans, adding locks to exterior doors and security cameras to entranceways and hallways.
"Society is more violent now, and parents are a lot more afraid of what's going on and what could happen in schools," said Sitar.
"We're doing everything we can to try to alleviate those fears and make it as safe as possible."
Joyce Pellino Crane can be reached at crane@globe.com. 