There are costs involved when schools must react to threats

There are costs involved when schools must react to threats

Return with us now to the not-so-thrilling days of yesteryear, when the parents of students who vandalized school buildings were routinely ordered to make restitution.

We’re not sure when it fell out of fashion, but even a casual reading of our Years Ago column indicates that back in the ’50s (thus the snippet in the sentence above cadged from the opening of “The Lone Ranger”), unruly students often paid for the damage they did.

We understand that those were simpler times. And the damage done to schools was easier to identify and quantify. The bill for replacing broken windows or cleaning up spilled paint could be computed on a sheet of paper.

Today, school districts are incurring costs of a different kind — costs that are associated with the need to lockdown classrooms or cancel classes because of threats of violence found in random notes or scrawled on bathroom walls.

The Niles City School District has been the latest victim of turmoil caused by threats. Niles McKinley High School went through separate lockdown periods Monday and Tuesday, when students were kept in classrooms while police searched hallways and lockers. As a result, absenteeism soared on Wednesday, with more students staying home than attending. Superintendent Rocco Adduci reported that enrollment was back to normal Thursday.

Widespread costs

The threats caused an enormous waste of resources, not only for the school district, but for the police department. And, quite frankly, we believe that someone should be held to account.

State law already provides for a school board to file suit for recovery of losses due to theft or vandalism, but trying to stretch that statute to cover all the losses suffered when classes are interrupted would be difficult. And it places the onus on the board to file suit.

But if the juvenile court is unable to make restitution part of its handling of the case of a student who induced panic in his or her school, then it may be time for the Legislature to re-examine the law regarding parental responsibility.

The General Assembly is already working an a bill that toughens the felony statutes for people who induce panic in schools. And a section of that law, H.B. 142, recognizes that there are costs involved when schools must cancel classes because there has been a threat of violence. The law defines economic harm as all wages, salaries or compensation lost because employees were prevented from working as a result of someone’s criminal conduct. It also recognizes as losses the costs incurred by law enforcement officers, firefighters, rescue personnel or emergency medical service personnel.

If such losses are good enough for defining a felony offense of inducing panic, they should also be good enough in determining restitution owed by the felon (or by a juvenile’s parents).

Such restitution provisions won’t end in-school threats. But they will give parents another incentive to talk to their children about why making a threat in school isn’t a lapse in judgment or a practical joke — it’s a very big deal that could have life-changing consequences for the entire family.