WILMINGTON, MA — It wasn’t picked up by local media outlets, but it turns out Wilmington was not immune to last week’s rash of threat hoaxes made towards schools across the state.
At Wednesday’s School Committee Meeting, Superintendent of Schools Mary DeLai announced that the Shawsheen Elementary School received a threat on Tuesday morning.
DeLai was quick to point out that the incident wasn’t just a “Wilmington issue,” explaining that approximately 20-25 Massachusetts school districts, of varying sizes and locations, received threats over a recent five-day stretch. She also reported that New Jersey had 26 school districts recently targeted with similar threats.
“It’s very frustrating for school administrators to have to deal with these hoaxes. It’s very disruptive,” said DeLai. “We just want our community to know that we have very strong protocols in place that we utilize to assess threats when they come about. ”
Shawsheen parents received the initial email from Principal Lisa King on Tuesday at 12:05pm:
“This morning we received a threatening phone call. We notified the Wilmington Police Department and the police responded to the school to investigate the threat. The school was searched out of an abundance of caution. It was determined that there was no immediate threat and an officer will remain on site for the remainder of the school day. We are aware that similar threats have been made to other schools in the region. While this makes us question the credibility of this threat we continue to treat all incidents seriously and take all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of students and staff.”
Shawsheen parents received a follow-up email from Principal King on Tuesday at 2:15pm:
I wanted to send a follow up message to families about today due to some questions that I have been fielding. Based on our assessment of the threat, an evacuation was not deemed appropriate or warranted. Nor did we feel the threat level or credibility warranted discussions with students as we did not want to cause undue stress or anxiety for them. The students conducted their day today as they would any other day. They had indoor recess due to the weather conditions which was announced in the morning.
If people have specific questions we encourage you to reach out to the school rather than rely on information posted on social media as this may not reflect accurate information.
“We followed out threat assessment protocols and we made decisions based on those protocols,” DeLai said at Wedneday’s School Committee Meeting. “We accessed the level of threat and made decisions around whether or not it was appropriate to evacuate the school or shelter in place. Those decisions are made, context specific, depending on the threats.”
In the messages to parents, and at the School Committee Meeting, the nature of the threat was never explicitly slated. Given the bomb threats occurring simultaneously in other districts, to which this incident was compared, many parents assumed the Shawsheen threat involved a bomb or explosives.
“We just want the community to know that we might not be always able to share all the information,” said DeLai. “We have an agreement with the Wilmington Police Department to never hinder their investigation and we rely on them to help us assess what information to release to the public.”
DeLai noted that not only is the Wilmington Police Department involved in the investigation, but so too are regional police collaboratives, the state police, and the FBI. DeLai also praised the work of Wilmington’s Lt. Scott Sencabaugh, seen as a leader in school security in Massachusetts, who helped lead the response to the threat.
“We don’t know where this is going. We don’t know if we’ll see additional threats or not,” cautioned DeLai.
Police logs offer no additional information, other than the fact that Wilmington Police was notified of the threat at 11:01am on Tuesday.
Wilmington Apple will update this article if is provided any additional information from the Wilmington Police Department or Wilmington school system.
(NOTE: The cover photo is from P3 Project Planning Professionals.)
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