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Warren schools evacuated Tuesday because of bomb threat
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A bomb threat received by the Warren Police Department at 10:16 a.m. Tuesday canceled classes for the rest of the day and tested the school district’s bomb-threat protocol.
After officials checked the perimeter of the district’s five school buildings for any danger, they evacuated all five and sent the children to evacuation sites.
The school district sent messages to parents to notify them around noon that the children were being sent home for the rest of day, though two parents outside of the evacuation site for the Willard K-8 building said they didn’t get a notification right away.
“I found out at work,” Ashley Boylen said of the bomb threat and school closing. Boylen has four children at Willard Pre-K to Grade 8 building. As of about 1:40 p.m., Boylen said she had not received a message from the school district, even though she had gotten one on her cellphone earlier letting her know about the first day of school.
Valerie Cowger, who also has a child at Willard, said she got a voice “one-call” notification about 1 p.m.
Other than not getting a call, Boylen said she was pleased with the way the school district handled the problem – getting the kids to a safe and cool place. “You had to have an ID to get your kids, and the kids were safe,” she said.
Michael Wasser, school district business manager, said he gives the district high marks for how fast the children were evacuated.
“We evacuated in less than four minutes at all of our sites,” Wasser said of the 5,000 students in the district. “They were fantastic today,” he said of the students and staff.
The school district started sending out buses to take children home at about noon, starting with Warren G. Harding High School, then the Lincoln and McGuffey schools, then the Willard and Jefferson schools.
Around 1:40 p.m., numerous parents were at the Willard evacuation site claiming their children. Buses were also leaving the site about half full.
The bomb threat came from a male saying a bomb would go off at 10:30 a.m., police said. The threat was not specific to any building.
Wasser said people received information about the evacuation from a number of places – including news media, school notifications and social media. He said the episode makes him believe it’s time the district also created Facebook and Twitter accounts for such instances.
Voice and email notifications went to parents around noon using whatever phone number the parents provided, officials said. Parents were told they could pick up their child at the evacuation site for their child’s building. They were told the location of the evacuation site when they arrived at their child’s school.
Children who were taken home on a bus were only dropped off there if the driver could confirm that a parent or guardian was there, Wasser said.
Those who could not be dropped off were brought back to the high school and later taken to their own building and then home again at the regular delivery time, Wasser said.
As of 4 p.m., it appeared that all students made it home safely, Wasser said.