When four adults overheard a kindergartner threaten to shoot another student in the cafeteria at Morgan Elementary School, Principal Tim Smith suspended the child.
The father was outraged.
“I rarely suspend a child, but we’re to the point where we have to take every threat seriously,” Smith said. “The earlier they learn, the better.
“I tell them to put themselves in the perspective of the child that is threatened... We have parents who want us to bend rules, but I think that’s unfair.”
In a little more than a month, administrators in the Rowan-Salisbury school system have reported 61 written or verbal threats of violence by students. That’s up from only one or two last year, said Howard Hurt, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction.
But the main reason the number of threats has risen so dramatically this year is because school employees are paying more attention to them, Hurt said.
“Parents need to be sure their kids know this is something they can’t joke about,” said Hurt, who has interviewed every student who has made a threat this year. “In this day and time, you cannot say anything about shooting or stabbing someone in a school. It’s like putting fire near gasoline.”
In the past month, at least one threat of violence has been reported on 21 of the 30 campuses in the Rowan-Salisbury school system, Hurt said. But perhaps most surprisingly, younger students are making threats far more than those in the high schools.
Of the 61 reported, 35 were in elementary schools, 23 in middle schools and just three in high schools.
Hurt said younger students don’t realize the consequences of telling another child something like, “I’m going to kill you.”
But in the wake of two shootings in schools in southern California earlier this year and the one at Columbine High School two years ago, school administrators must take all threats seriously, Hurt said. And younger children are no longer exempt; last year, a 6-year-old boy killed a classmate in a school in Flint, Mich.
“Elementary kids probably have been saying these things all along,” he said. “We just haven’t been so attuned to it.”
Students in lower grades at elementary schools typically receive 1-to-3 day suspensions from school for making threats, and those in upper grades get 3 to 5 days. Those in middle and high schools can face 5 to 10 days. But the superintendent can allow expulsion for the rest of the school year for a violent threat.
The streak of threats began on a Friday afternoon — March 23 — when a “hit list” was found on a hallway floor at Southeast Middle School. Shortly afterward, similar lists were found at other schools: two at West Rowan Middle School and one at Knollwood Elementary School.
But the most serious this year was an anonymous note written on a bathroom wall at China Grove Middle School that read, “The school’s going to blow up April 1,” Hurt said.
The rest of the 61 reported threats were verbal remarks.
“There are some who don’t know what they’re saying,” Hurt said. “There are some who are just showing off around their buddies. And there are some who are just bored, that just want to get out of school.”
Hurt said that even with more discussion about violence, schools are safer than ever before. They have more restricted access, persistent use of visitor passes and — in some cases — metal detectors and law enforcement officers.
“The schools are safer,” he said,” but to hear about these things, they appear worse.”
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