CALDWELL, Idaho — The Caldwell School Board held a meeting on Monday night to discuss safety concerns stemming from threats of a mass shooting that led to the cancellation of Caldwell High's Homecoming parade. This meeting addressed the impact of the social media threat, which resulted in over 2,700 students staying home from school on Friday. The board will focused on measures to ensure the safety of students and staff in light of these recent events.The district and Caldwell PD are still investigating the threats.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
“Last week was quite a week” is an understatement,” said Caldwell School District Director of Student Safety and Emergency Operations Eric Phillips.
The Caldwell School Board held a meeting to discuss last week's threats. On September 19th, parents received a notification from the school district that, unfortunately, Caldwell High School’s homecoming parade, scheduled for Friday, September 20th, had been canceled due to online threats of a possible mass shooting.
“Safety of our students and staff is a top priority,” said Phillips.
Classes on Friday were still in session; however, parents and guardians were able to excuse their child from class. More than 2,722 students were absent due to the threat. The board discussed the reasons why the parade was postponed and ways to ensure online threats are all taken seriously, no matter what, while also looking for ways to keep their students and staff safe.
Eric Phillips, Director of Student Safety, ensured that the district and Caldwell PD have been investigating these threats.
“At this time, we have no information that these threats are credible, but the police and administration of the district are following up on that,” said Phillips.
There were questions as to why the game still happened and not the dance or parade.
“When you look at a homecoming parade, as much as we love it, it's quite a wide open area. Each of the locations kids were going to be at we just don't have the personnel, as far as police and security, to cover that large of an area. The football game we did talk to police about that ahead of time, and they had several officers there, so we felt more comfortable since all the other threats didn’t pose a direct threat for the football game itself,” said Phillips.
The Caldwell School District has received a three year grant through the Idaho Education Department to have one SRO and hopes to have the district levy voted on in the ballot to ensure more SROs are added to the schools.
“So it’s fully funded for three years, so we get to welcome that strategic partner back into our school system, which we desperately need,” Said Phillips
The district did vote on an impacted attendance request from the state due to the low number of attendees on Friday and hopes families know that school was still in session because they felt school was safe and would have closed otherwise.