Situation Was Handled Well By All Involved

Principal Steve Casey commended Coeur d’Alene High School students and staff for coming together to find the suspect in last week’s bomb threat.

On Sept. 19, Casey announced over the intercom that the school had received a bomb threat the night before. A complete lockdown and temporary halt of hall passes went into effect immediately. Casey then asked the students and faculty to come forward with any information that might help them find the caller.

By noon, several students had talked with the administration and a suspect was soon arrested.

“The school pulled together. The kids pulled together. We asked them to help, and they came to us,” said Casey.

David Rawls, superintendent of the Coeur d’Alene School District, said he also was impressed with how well the students handled the situation. “A school is a society and community, and a society depends on security. Our student body said tampering with our sense of security is not OK.”

Monday night’s call was the second bomb threat made to the school in four days. It is believed that the second call was a copy-cat call, said Rawls. After sweeping the campus and putting the buildings under 24-hour surveillance, administration decided the campus was secure.

“You never think it’s going to happen at your school,” said junior Sarah Carlino. “I was scared at first, but I feel fine about the whole thing now. I have a lot of faith in our school.

“I don’t know,” Carlino added. “I feel in North Idaho, in our community, we shouldn’t have to worry about stuff like this. This isn’t like crime-ridden L.A.”

Some students felt that the school should have taken more precautions after the authorities were aware of the threat. There have been many concerned parents and students calling and questioning why school wasn’t cancelled on Tuesday. Casey said there were several reasons for this.

“We knew the building was safe. The alarm was on Monday night. So no student could get into the school without it going off,” said Casey. “The issue is, we have 1,300 kids. Any one of them could bring a bomb with them.”

Another reason was that they needed the students at school to help identify the caller, said speech teacher Melody Melton. It was obviously effective, because we knew who the caller was at the end of the day.”

Melton, who has taught at CHS for 11 years, said she is proud of the student who came forward. “It may be a false sense of security, but because our school has been proactive, I’m not as frightened here as I might be elsewhere.”

The district has installed several security features to make its schools safe. One of them is School Emergency Response Planning. There is a SERP team at every school. They meet every other month, and at the next meeting the issue of the bomb threats will be discussed, said Rawls.

SERP is an important key to safety, said Rawls. “I feel another critical component is the students. The students need to take responsibility, too.”

Rawls said the arrested student did admit to making the second call and still is in juvenile detention. Plans for expulsion have not yet been made.

“In my opinion, as long as there have been schools there have been kids breaking rules and performing acts of violence. This was obviously someone in need of attention,” said Melton.

Freshman Mike Crawford agreed. “Kids think they’re cool when they do stuff like this. People need to use common sense. I’m just kind of amazed someone so stupid would do this.”

A week after the arrest, students said they were beginning to feel safe again.

“I probably would be worried if we didn’t have such a great school,” said Carlino. “Kids who do this kind of stuff go to extremes for attention. The kids here don’t make people feel inferior. Our school is nice enough that people don’t feel left out or out of place.”

On Sept. 25, Casey visited a morning student council meeting to discuss the past week’s events. He encouraged the school’s 40 student representatives to come up with ideas to prevent this from happening again.

Casey has also hinted that new restrictions like uniforms, magnetic I.D. cards, metal detectors, and the abolishment of backpacks might be possible solutions.

“We’re lucky, but things are changing. The tenor across the country is different,” said Casey. Hopefully, we don’t have to come to that, he said.

“I don’t know what the answer to all of this is. But if there is an answer, it’s with the kids. Attitude is everything. If you believe in good kids, you’ll get good kids,” said Casey.