Connellsville officials dismiss rumor of school threat
CONNELLSVILLE – Connellsville Area School District Superintendent James Duncan dispelled rumors Friday of a student threat to “Not make the mistake the Virginia Tech shooter had made.” Duncan said a student was disciplined and then suspended earlier in the week for allegedly making threats.
“Rumors are running rampant in the school district today,” said Duncan. “There was a rumor that a kid was shot at Junior High West that was totally false. The kids seem to be going nuts with their cell phones calling parents and basically trying to get out of class because it’s such a beautiful day.”
Duncan said other than the disciplinary action at the senior high school, nothing else unusual was going on.
“There really is no story with the exception of the earlier discipline problem, but we have discipline problems on a daily basis,” Duncan continued. “The male student who was disciplined basically had a problem with a girlfriend or something, and the high school administration basically handled the problem.”
Duncan said the student allegedly did say that he would not make the mistake the Virginia Tech shooter made, but no one will testify that he said it. “We don’t have any positive proof of anything.”
Duncan said school officials’ reaction was based on the fact that he might have said it and he was suspended.
“We don’t have any evidence that he said it,” said Duncan. “At this point it’s all supposition. The bottom line is there is no story because it was just a discipline action. There were also rumors that the school was on lock down, and I can tell you this that every day our doors at the high school are locked.”
Duncan said there is only one way in the high school and the doors lock behind the students when they come in. He additionally said this has been going on for a couple of years to ensure the safety of the students.
“Safety is the number one issue,” he continued. “Certainly, if we had a problem that we thought was going to jeopardize the safety of any of our kids, we would react to that.”
Duncan said the student who was disciplined will be on some sort of alternative education for the remainder of the school year.
Duncan said the student will not be in the building as a precautionary measure, but will receive his education.
Indy Lynn, senior high school attendance coordinator, said attendance was down at the school Friday.
“We normally run between 90 and 92 percent attendance and we were at about 62 percent today,” she said. “I know that we had a significant number of students who came to school and then parents hearing rumors out in the community rushed up to pick their kids up.”
Lynn said several field trips were also scheduled for Friday so a number of the students were absent for that reason. She said field trips are not counted as absent days. She also said that at least one large group and one small group of students were absent because of the field trips.
“I think there were a lot of kids who wanted a day off so they went home and exaggerated their fear or explained what they heard and didn’t have anything to back it up, so parents’ fears were exaggerated,” Lynn said.
“We just kind of approached Friday’s absentee situation as if it were any other day,” said Lynn. “And, actually I’ll bet that there were only about 700 kids in school today, which would more than likely put us at about 30 to 40 percent.”
Lynn said in her first period class there were five kids, in her second period class she had two and in her third period class she had three kids. She said when she was looking at it, she noticed that a lot of the absent kids were on the field trip.
Lynn said that school attendance starts to take a nosedive generally in the fourth nine weeks once the weather starts to get better.
“A lot of the seniors get senioritis in May, so it’s a battle to keep them in school at the end of the school year,” concluded Lynn.