DuPont parents concerned after district didn’t notify them about alleged school threat for days

DuPont parents are concerned after the Steilacoom Historical School District (SHSD) did not notify families about an alleged school shooting threat for several days, they told KIRO 7 News.

Parents said the student allegedly had a list of students he was going to target last Thursday.

Students were told by their teachers to not notify their parents about the alleged threat, parents told KIRO 7 News.

The district began its investigation into the alleged threats Monday, an email from the district confirmed.

STEILACOOM HISTORICAL SCHOOL DISTRICT:

KIRO 7 News spoke with Shawn Lewis, assistant superintendent with SHSD, to learn more about the alleged incident.

Two students were arguing at Pioneer Middle School, located on Bob’s Hollow Lane in DuPont, last Thursday, he said, and one boy made a threat to the other student to not show up to school the following day.

The school had been scheduled to close Friday and the next school day was scheduled for Monday.

“Last Thursday, there was a verbal altercation between two students. They had an argument. One of the students said ‘you better not show up to school tomorrow. Friday was a no school day anyway. So none of our students came to school on Friday. That incident was investigated by our School of Administration and they found it to not be credible. And there was no threat to the school,” he said.

Lewis said the district identified the two boys and spoke with them and their parents.

KIRO 7 News asked Lewis if teachers had instructed students to not tell their parents about the incident and the alleged list of targets.

“The district was not aware,” he said. He added the district did not find a list of names.

“We also have no information about that. There was no incident yesterday (Monday). We had no reports of any incidents yesterday. There were no lists of students,” he shared.

Lewis told KIRO 7 News the district did not notify parents about Thursday’s incident immediately.

“It did not raise to the level of notifying all parents. Nothing has happened since then that had given us any indication that there were other instances or issues that need to be communicated to parents. So we didn’t communicate those,” he shared.

However, Lewis said the district takes threats and student safety seriously.

“Student safety is our paramount concern. It’s our paramount duty here. We know families entrust students to us. So we take every allegation, every issue extremely seriously. We investigate all of this thoroughly,” he said. “We have an alert system where students and families can notify us if they have any information, it’s like a tip line. If we get any information, we will continue to investigate, but we have nothing right now. We have nothing to investigate. There was no incident yesterday.”

KIRO 7 News also reached out to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office to get further details about the alleged threat. We’re still waiting to hear back.

EMAIL SENT OUT:

The district sent an email Tuesday morning to notify parents about last Thursday’s incident after parents had shared concerns about student safety on social media, Lewis said.

The district began its investigation into the alleged threats Monday, the email wrote.

“Dear Pioneer Community,There has been some discussion on social media (Facebook) about a possible threat at Pioneer Middle School. There was an implied threat from last week, Thursday, that was investigated Monday. We found the statement to be embellished like in a game of “telephone”. The threat was in no way specific or credible. The student’s parents have been contacted, of course. On a side note, yesterday we put out a reminder to report any concerns you may have for school. This was in no way tied to this incident; we did so because a group of leadership students said they forgot the reporting process, so we wanted to share a reminder. I hope this helps put you at ease. Safety at our school is of the utmost importance,” JoAnne Fernandes, the principal of Pioneer Middle School, wrote in an email that was sent to parents on Tuesday morning.

Lewis said, “We typically don’t notify the entire student body when there was just a verbal altercation between two students. So we did not send anything home. There were Facebook posts last night, and based on those Facebook posts, we did notify families there was nothing to worry about today.”

PARENTS CONCERNS:

KIRO 7 News spoke with concerned parents, who notified us about the alleged threats.

We spoke with a mother, who did not want to be identified on camera due to fear of retaliation from the school district.

“Might affect my daughter’s ability to be able to fit in and they might target her even more because me whistleblowing,” she said. “I feel scared. I kept my kids home today.”

“On Thursday, there was a situation where a boy said ‘don’t come to school the next day’ because he had plans to shoot a few kids and he had a list of a few kids he had targeted,” she shared.

“She (daughter) said there was an incident last Thursday where people, kids at the school overheard an altercation in the hallway where someone said they were going to shoot up the school and they had a list,” her husband shared.

“Another parent said she heard the same thing from her child. So I decided to keep my kids home because I wanted to make sure they were okay,” the mother shared.

Another parent shared similar concerns on Facebook about the alleged threats.

“My 8th grader said the kid (she knew who it was) threatened a shooting at the school and had a list of names,” she commented in a Facebook post.

We spoke with the mother on the phone about her Facebook comment. However, she declined to talk on camera due to fear of retaliation from the school district.

KIRO 7 News also spoke with another mother who said her child attends Pioneer Middle School.

She declined to speak on camera, but she told us that she works as a substitute teach for Pioneer Middle School and has seen a number of student fights in the past. She did not have concerns about the district’s response to the alleged threats, she shared.

She said the district needs time to investigate any alleged threats before notifying parents.

The first mother we spoke with in person said her daughter told her that her teachers had instructed her and other students to not tell their parents about last week’s incident.

“The teachers didn’t say anything to the parents. They told the kids to not tell anybody. And just to let it go. It wasn’t a big deal,” she said.

The mother said she reached out to the school district, but did not get clarity or answers.

“The principal didn’t respond. Didn’t tell the parents anything over the weekend. She had numerous days to tell everyone,” she added.

We asked the mother about the district’s explanation behind their decision to not notify parents immediately after Thursday’s incident.

“That’s an irresponsible response, especially because in the handbook for the school, they have a mandate duty to report to the parents if there’s an issue like this, which they did not,” she said.

The parents told KIRO 7 News that they want more transparency and communication from the district, especially when it comes to severe allegations.

“There needs to be more transparency,” she said. “You send them to school and put your kid’s life in someone’s care and they can be potentially hurt. The fact that these people don’t take it seriously and they keep it to themselves is really unfortunate and it’s not fair to us parents to not be in the know,” she shared.

“Especially with how severe these incidents can be and how quickly they can go from zero to 100, it seems that time is of the essence too. At least make a general statement,” the father said. “In this day and age, it’s fair to at least notify us that threats are being made, and if they’re plausible or not, we should still notified about it. And we need to know the school’s actions and what they’re doing to prevent any violence at school.”

“When anyone makes a threat, we have the right to know that stuff is happening and what actions are being taken to prevent anything like that from happening,” he added. “It’s scary. In this day in age, you expect more transparency and more reaction from the school district.”

KIRO 7 News asked both parents about the district’s email that was sent out Tuesday morning.

The mother said the district still needs to be more proactive about notifying parents, especially when a number of students were talking about the alleged incident, which created many to feel concerned and scared.

She said she is not sure if the district would have sent out an email notifying parents if people had not shared concerns on Facebook.

“If they knew about it on Thursday, why didn’t they deal with it on Monday? Why didn’t they tell us over the weekend? After the Facebook post, they immediately sent out a mass email to everybody,” she said.