Northampton school officials are reviewing new procedures for handling potential threats — including ways to better communicate with students, staff and parents — in the wake of a bomb threat that led to lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders in multiple district school buildings.
The threat against Northampton High School arrived around 2 p.m. on Sept. 13, the middle of an otherwise normal Tuesday afternoon for students, teachers and administrators. Superintendent Jannell Pearson-Campbell said it came in a group text message between students.
High school students and staff were told to shelter in place as police investigated the threat — meaning they were allowed to continue classroom instruction but told to stay in their current room. Out of caution, Bridge Street, Leeds and Jackson elementary schools also issued shelter-in-place orders. JFK Middle School entered a lockdown — all teaching stopped, classrooms stayed quiet, and no one was permitted to leave their room, the superintendent said.
The Massachusetts State Police Bomb Squad responded to the high school, as did local Northampton police and fire officials. Students were released more than an hour-and-a-half later after the building was deemed safe by police.
Little other information about the nature of the threat will be publicly available, Pearson-Campbell said at a special School Committee meeting on Sept. 22.
“Due to privacy laws, we are only able to provide limited information,” she said. “However, the district leadership took steps to communicate available and appropriate information to the community.”
Since the day after the threat, when Pearson-Campbell met with Northampton Police Department Chief Jody Kasper and other school and police staff, the district has taken steps to better respond to any future incidents, the superintendent said.
Pearson-Campbell said she was reviewing the policy for responding to bomb threats with the police department, the school legal counsel and the school special education attorney.
The district also created a crisis team — including school principals, the director of student services, the director of nursing, and police — to further review school safety plans and the procedure for responding to a bomb threat.
Police will also be training school staff in their role during a bomb threat response.
Pearson-Campbell said the crisis team had developed a standardized email that could be quickly sent to teachers during a threat, detailing how they should respond. School Committee member Holly Ghazey had raised questions to the superintendent about clear messaging — using an intercom system to alert the school to a threat runs a risk of the message becoming jumbled in the daily fray of a school building.
Pearson-Campbell also said that the district would be establishing “team captains” at each building — the principal, or the associate principal in their place — who could coordinate with law enforcement during a threat response.
School committee members also raised concerns of getting messages to parents during a crisis, and whether robocalls could be used to quickly alert families to threats. Using robocalls is a decision by public safety officials, Pearson-Campbell said.
The superintendent also explained lingering questions surrounding the response to the threat, including why JFK Middle School was locked down when the threat revolved around the high school.
“We didn’t know where the message was coming from,” Pearson-Campbell said. “So that was done out of precaution.”
She added that Ryan Road Elementary School did not shelter students in place, as they were already in the middle of dismissal.
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