Niles and Brandywine schools closed two schools early again Wednesday after receiving more fake bomb threats.
Niles Community Schools Superintendent Dan Applegate says he’s had about enough.
On Wednesday Niles police and school officials found themselves in what’s become a familiar situation: Running police dogs through schools to sniff out bomb threats that someone’s phoning in.
Officials closed Niles High School and Ballard Elementary. Brandywine Elementary happened to already have a two-hour delay for teacher professional development, so police were able to clear the building during that time and still have school.
The threats started after a video went viral of a 5th grade Ballard Elementary student beating up a younger student on a school bus earlier this month.
"It's very sad and I feel very sorry for our students who are fearful or are anxious about going to school, or just want to be in school and have plenty of things to be doing," Applegate said.
I asked Applegate whether, if the calls keep coming, and every call must be checked out, this could become a permanent problem.
"I'm going to do what I can to make school as safe as possible, and at some point, parents will have to decide what they're going to do" Applegate said. "I don't know. I don't really have a good answer to that. I'm just going to have to take each one individually and communicate, and figure it out from there.
"I hope the insanity of this stops."
