Students flee hot stadium after bomb threat
A bomb threat stirred commotion despite there being no explosive devices found at CVHS on Sept. 23, during the final period of the day. While the threat was reportedly at approximately 1:07 p.m., an evacuation order came around 1:44 p.m., just as the period started. Students and staff were immediately ushered out of classrooms and directed to the upper field.
“The search was completed, and no explosive devices were located. At this time, there is no threat to the public, and the school has been deemed safe,” stated the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO).
The entire ordeal grew hectic as thousands of students pushed through crowds, many visibly panicked as well as confused, unbeknownst of what was happening. Even teachers and staff members were left in the dark regarding the chaos, leaving them as confused as students.
Sheriff’s officers could be seen quickly securing campus entrances and trained explosive-detection K-9 units were dispatched at the scene to search the grounds.
Meanwhile, students grew restless enduring 90-degree weather.
“I don’t like the fact that we were waiting outside in the sun for so long,” said senior Memphis Duncan. “It was way too hot.”
Some attempted to leave campus, and when they discovered the gates were locked, at least four took the opportunity to climb unguarded gates, escaping what felt like a dire situation.
“I saw them climbing, and I decided not to interfere,” stated senior Jimi Thompson, who witnessed four kids scale a nonsupervised gate. “Ain’t my problem at the end of the day.”
Despite the gates being unguarded, a security officer pursued these kids in an attempt to identify them. However, it was too late as they had long left.
Parents were conjugating in parking lots and around the campus, worried of the danger the threat posed to their children. In fact, conflict between staff members and parents broke out when parents attempted to pull their kids out of school early.
As students were trying to leave the stadium to get to their parents, a school employee allegedly slammed a girl into the fence to stop her from leaving, according to sophomore Kalina Barrow. “After she was pulled out of the gate by her mother, other students attempted to leave with their parents where they were then wedged against the fence and aggressively grabbed,” stated Barrow.
Later, the school issued an “all clear,” determining it safe for students and staff to return to class at about 2:50 p.m., half an hour before students are dismissed from school. At that point, many had already snuck out of school. A few teachers even dismissed students saying “it was okay to go home.”
“The safety of our students and staff is always our highest priority, and we appreciate your patience and support as we work closely with law enforcement,” Principal Christopher Fortenberry wrote in an email sent out to parents.
ACSO has confirmed an active investigation is underway.
“The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office takes all threats seriously and is actively investigating the source of the call. We are working closely with Castro Valley Unified School District officials to ensure the continued safety of students, staff, and the community,” reported ACSO.
I believe that this was not the proper way to deal with an emergency. Keeping the kids holed up on a hot field on the hottest day of the week, if not the whole year, with little water was a health emergency just waiting to happen. Heat exhaustion, passing out, and more are just some of the worries that need to be dealt with in a situation like this, and that didn’t happen. I hope to see better actions from our school in the future.
I think that teachers shouldve been given the proper information and instruction to help protect the students. I think that if kids felt unsafe they had a right to protect themselves and leave campus, especially if a parent comes to pick them up. I think that it was so random and unexpected that the admin team did the best they could, although keeping thousands of students and faculty in the dark is going to cause more panic then giving them some sort of information. I also think its weird that parents got emails before on site staff knew what was happening.
This is a great article! I was not personally there during the day of the bomb threat, and this article kept me up to date with what was going on. I believe that this threat was handled improperly as students shouldn’t be kept on the field out in the open heat and the announcements made to the parents were not immediate. This also leaves open the question about the new phone policy! These recent incidents have deeply opposed the new phone policy because what if something were to go wrong? Students wouldn’t have an accessible form of communication with their parents. The students were also most likely the ones to communicate to the parents that something was going on in the school rather than the school making an official announcement to them.
Brian makes a lot of good points.
Teachers should also follow protocol and evacuate the moment they begin to get the evacuation announcement. My student’s classroom was not evacuated immediately. The teacher didn’t believe the directive on the loud speaker. It wasn’t until another teacher knocked and told him he needed to evacuate.
It’s important that the school provides an immediate announcement to parents instead of an hour later when the community was already alerted before. Keeping transparency and updates puts people at ease.
Hopefully, we can all learn from these two incidents this week. Again parents were not notified of Friday’s incident until an hour and a half later.
First, the staff’s, students’, and parents’ real world reactions show how people respond in actual situations, emergency drills notwithstanding.
Second, bomb threats, active shooter threats, and swatting have escalated from the old “pull the fire alarm trick” that students used to do either for kicks or to avoid a test. That’s a sad indictment of society.
Third, administration should have provided factual information to staff about the situation; instead, they apparently lost their own partners in managing the situation. The less people know, the more extreme their reactions, such as students scaling fences. (It reminds me of a case in another district when administration broke all protocols and reacted to a minor situation with a shutdown, causing fear among both students and staff.)
Fourth, no one can expect any learning to take place after a scare like this one, yet schools remain responsible for all students until the last bell. While teachers should have provided students with time to talk about the event, or show a movie, or just provide free time, they should not have let students leave early after the threat was cleared.
Fifth, parents should not be coming to the gate to extract their students from school in an emergency situation. If the bomb threat were real, a) they could have become additional victims, and b) first responders would have had difficultly getting through the congestion to the scene.