The Columbus Municipal School District hosted its second safety summit Friday in ongoing efforts to create better strategies for threat crisis assessment and response, particularly with bomb threats, which have plagued the district all year.
Officials from the Mississippi Department of Education’s Office of School Safety made a presentation on recommended bomb threat response procedures.
The main goal is to keep the threat from interfering with normal school operations as much as possible. Deputy Superintendent Craig Shannon estimates the district has lost 26 hours of instruction time this year as schools were evacuated seven times due to bomb threats.
There were 204 bomb threats at various Mississippi facilities between 1994 and 1997, with 16 resulting in detonations, MDE School Safety Specialist Janice Grant said. Nationwide, there were more than 8,000 incidents. Of the school bomb threats, all but three were perpetrated by students with cell phones on campus.
The average bomb threat costs a community more than $20,000, and MDE suggests districts and communities hold parents fiscally responsible for their children’s actions. They also recommend adjudicating juvenile callers as adults. Making a bomb threat, even if it’s proven to be a hoax, is a felony and punishable by 10 years in the state penitentiary and/or up to a $10,000 fine.
The majority of bomb threat calls are intended to cause anxiety and panic, with the remainder placed by callers who either know or believe an explosive device has been planted and want to minimize property damage or deaths.
Grant’s suggestions included getting as much information as possible from the caller by keeping them on the phone while listening for background noise and recognizable speech patterns like accents or impediments. Typically, the more detailed the information, the higher the threat level.
Bomb threat response sheets will be located at each school’s office phone, reminding whomever answers of the proper questions and protocol.
The district is implementing a bomb threat response team, headed by the principal, at each school. The principal is responsible for choosing the proper reaction, either ignoring the threat, evacuating, performing a search and evacuating if necessary or declaring the building clear. Ignoring the threat is not recommended, Grant said.
District officials are currently being trained on proper search procedure , with four visual sweeps from floor level to ceiling.
Columbus Police Department Capt. Fred Shelton and Lt. Carroll Culpepper, along with Columbus Air Force Base dog handlers, offered search tips and other procedures.
Interim Superintendent Dr. Martha Liddell said community input from local law enforcement, emergency management and other first responders has provided “significant insight” into the district’s safety and security improvements.
“From principals to school resource officers, we have found our greatest asset as a team is our ability to work together by soliciting input from the community,” Liddell said Friday afternoon. “We live in an unpredictable world where we cannot control individuals who seek to instill fear, disruption and anxiety in children by calling in bomb threats. However, we can have well-articulated response steps that can be implemented at a moment’s notice.”
The city school district will host a third safety summit in June to develop a revised crisis response as well as figure out how to fund it.
The ultimate goal, Liddell said, is to learn how to prevent crises before they happen and improve communication with first responders.
“We are ahead of the curve in matching up with parents’ and state safety officials’ expectations for safe schools,” she said. “Our schools are very safe, and we want to keep them that way by learning new ways to improve.”
Anyone with school safety concerns or information about threats can call 1-866-960-6472 to leave anonymous tips. The hotline is available 24/7.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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