<p>It’s sort of worrisome actually – but my kids’ high school (grades 7 -12) has never had a bomb scare in the 8 years I’ve had kids there. Now, I somehow doubt that no one has ever called one in… I suspect either no one would bother answering the phone, or they’d know who it was on the other end and scold them, or they’d chalk it up to “boys will be boys” (all boys school). </p>
<p>Now I might add that this particular school is run rather, ummm, loosely. (Men in charge. )</p>
<p>So it made me wonder, is there such a thing as a bomb-threat-less high school?</p>
<p>To my knowledge my D’s hs has never had a bomb threat. But then again they had a student bring a weapon and alcohol on an overnight trip. We as parents never heard about it when it happened. It filtered through the grapevine and my D told me about months after the fact. The kid was suspended from the school for a year so he went to a neighboring school district, but has been back at the school for 2 years now.</p>
<p>Yup-never had a bomb scare (parochial suburban). However, they have had many, many problems with alcohol at on-campus events, and I also heard rumors of kids showing up at school drunk. And then, we also had to contend with the shooting death of one of D’s classmates by another classmate which was fueled by alcohol (it was an accident).</p>
<p>OTOH, the local public schools have had numerous problems with bomb scares over the years.</p>
<p>To my knowledge, my kids’ urban public high school has not had a bomb threat in the past 5 years. I’m not positive I would know if it did, though. My son might mention it, and might not. They would probably call home with a recorded message at least, and that hasn’t happened.</p>
<p>It’s a pretty happy place – when I go there, I don’t get a sense that there’s an undercurrent of seething resentment anywhere.</p>
<p>To my knowledge, son’s school never had a bomb threat. It is a small private school (roughly 450 students, Gr. 5-12). In fact, the most I am aware of kids with problems, are student suspended for using the internet to send questionable, racy, bordering on porn info to another student and a couple of students kicked out and sent back to public school for drugs. That is not to say that there were other issues (alcohol, bullying, etc.). Just none that I was aware of. The biggest threat or scare seemed to come by way of weather, tornadoes!</p>
<p>Never a bomb scare at the small private high school my son attended. The school has 5 essential rules:</p>
<p>We do not tolerate physical or psychological violence.
We do not permit the use of drugs, alcohol, or tobacco.
We require regular attendance.
We expect a sincere involvement in the school on both an academic and a social level.
We do not tolerate cheating or plagiarism (the stealing of other people’s thought or work), forgery, or other instances of dishonesty.</p>
<p>So not only no bomb threats, but no fighting, no teasing, no bullies allowed.</p>
<p>I’m sure that there are many, many high schools that have never had a bomb threat. The fact that anyone could even conceive of asking such a question shows how we’ve all become “accustomed” (I know that’s a poor choice of word, but I can’t think of a better one) to acts of violence or threatened acts of violence in our schools.</p>
<p>My children have grown up in a world that seems much less safe than the one I grew up in. In my childhood world, I never personally knew anyone who had died. The closest I came was when a 3rd grade classmate missed a few days of school because her mother had passed away after a long illness. The teacher spoke to us about what had happened. I recall feeling a little puzzled that someone’s mother could die, but the news did not have much effect on me. It did not feel like something that could touch my family.</p>
<p>The JFK assasination took place when I was in the 4th grade. It seemed an incredible event to me, but again, not something that that could touch my family.</p>
<p>My children have grown up in a world where school shootings are almost commonplace. My older D attended the H.S. in KY where a student shot his mother, father, and little sister before coming to school and holding his math class at gunpoint. The assistant principal talked the young man into giving up his gun before harming anyone at the school. My 13 year old D had been in dance class with the murdered girl for several years. My H was a teacher at the school and I was actually at the school rehearsing with his choir students during the time the hostage incident took place. My H, his students, and I were the only people at the school that day that did not hear a message to lock down. We were in the brand new school’s auditorium, which had not yet been hooked up to the central communication system. My H and I learned about the hostage-taking incident after it was all over.</p>
<p>I can only imagine how my D felt knowing that her friend’s brother had killed her and her parents and had threatened to kill students at her school. I know that the incident came up many times in writing that she did for school assignments throughout H.S. I think the day that Clay Shrout went on his rampage marked the end of my D’s childhood. From that point forward, she knew that monstrous things did not just happen in the movies or to strangers in far away places, they happened to people she knew.</p>
<p>Bomb scares aren’t necessarily serious threats of violence.</p>
<p>Sometimes, they’re a way to sabotage tests.</p>
<p>When I was in high school (thirtysomething years ago), there was a bomb scare called in during every single third period Algebra 2 test for the entire school year. It got to the point where the teachers made us take our papers with us and finish the test in the parking lot.</p>
<p>Presumably, someone in the class had an off-campus accomplice who helped do this.</p>
<p>I don’t think our semi-large, rural public school has ever had a bomb scare. They did, however, have a “lock-down drill” yesterday. Kinda like the “take-cover alerts” we had in elementary school. And they decided this was a good time to bring in the drug-sniffing dogs. One of the kids my Son grew up with won’t be graduating with his class . . .</p>
<p>I graduated from high school in 1987 (rural regional high school, about 450 students in the entire building), and my senior year, we had a bomb threat at least once a week for the last 3 months of school. No bomb was ever found. Our teachers made us bring our work outside, too.</p>
<p>There was a hs closed this morning that is about 30-45 minute drive from us. Everyone knew it was closed this morning because it was at the bottom of the screen on one of the local stations (like they do for snow days or if the electricity or water is out). I just heard on the noon news that it was because of a bomb threat. They didn’t mention that it was closed for a bomb threat on the morning news though.</p>
<p>My school never had one. It’s small, K-12, and I’ve never heard of a student doing something, knowing he/she would get caught, and knowing that it would result in having to leave the school.</p>
<p>No bomb threats in our suburban public HS. But like yours, SpringfieldMom, LOTS of alcohol abuse. A few years back our school had a tragic DUI-related death of a couple of students, but it doesn’t stop kids from being kicked out of the Jr. Prom for showing up drunk. We did have an incident last year where someone threw the master breaker switch and shut off the power and another where someone stole the “brain” from a lab model.</p>
<p>I can’t actually think of ANY bomb threats at any of the schools in our county or even the extended area (and that’s saying something, considering where we live!). I could be wrong though.</p>
<p>Worse thing at my public HS in So. Cal umpteen years ago was a fight between a faculty member and a student (no weapons involved).</p>
<p>Yes, our homeschool has never had a bomb scare. There ARE guns at our school, but they are carefully locked up. Gun Club with NRA shooting is part of our curriculum. Our local high school has had several bomb scares.</p>
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