This month, students at Leavenworth High School were placed on lockdown after a teenager allegedly threatened the school.
Kansas City Public Schools added security and conducted regular perimeter checks after two of its high schools received threats. It placed another school on restricted movement for a day.
A teacher in Independence taught to less than a dozen students one day as families kept their students home in response to multiple threats to schools across Jackson County. Later that week, another incident drew police to a district high school to investigate.
Since July 1, Missouri State Highway Patrol has received 102 tips about school shooting threats – nearly equal to the 115 school shooting threats reported in the entire last school year. The threats have disrupted learning, distressed students, families and teachers, and could cost schools hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost funding.
Why are we seeing more threats against schools?
John McDonald, Chief Operating Officer for the Missouri School Board Association’s Center for Education Safety, said school threats are cyclical. They occur throughout the year, but start in higher numbers near the beginning of the school year before slowing down.
Threats spike after mass shootings at other schools — the Sept. 4 shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia that made national news likely contributed to Kansas and Missouri’s September surge — and around anniversaries of previous tragedies, like the April anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.
“(People who make threats) like to boundary probe to see how far they can get, to see what's going to be done, to see the chaos that they cause,” McDonald said. “Schools have learned over the last 25 years now that we don't have the luxury of not believing a threat.”
McDonald said Missouri and most other states don’t have a mandate requiring school threats to be reported, making numbers difficult to track. He urged students to use Courage2Report, the Missouri Highway Patrol’s anonymous hotline, because it's tied into local, state, and federal law enforcement.
Courage2Report said it received 1,579 tips to its hotline from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024, including 52 duplicates. Of those tips, 115 were for a school shooting threat and 75 were a gun threat.
Since the beginning of this school year, which Courage2Report considers July 1, it received tips for 102 school shooting threats and 14 planned school attacks.
John Calvert, head school safety specialist for the Kansas Department of Education, said the state is also seeing an uptick in social media threats compared to previous years.
He said mental health needs have increased since the COVID pandemic began, and social media can make it easier for some to forget that their words and actions affect real people. Schools aren’t immune from other issues outside classroom walls, Calvert said.
“We are just smaller communities inside of a community,” Calvert said. “If our community itself is becoming more and more violent, then it's easier to see that then our schools probably will become more and more as well.”
Calvert and local law enforcement encourage residents to report threats, but not re-share them on social media.
What do schools do once they get a threat?
Schools first assess the nature of the threat -- like if there’s a warning about an attack or telling students not to come to class tomorrow.
Schools then immediately call 911 and work with a school resource or police officer to help make security decisions, like whether to shut down a building, secure the perimeter or find a student named in a threat.
McDonald said schools face two kinds of threats, internal and external, and handle both differently.
Schools rely on a program called behavioral threat assessment to address internal threats. That includes bringing together a group of educators, counselors, law enforcement, parents and the student to understand where the threat is coming from and how to handle it.
McDonald said external threats pose a greater challenge. Schools need to have a secure program to lock their doors and ensure that students let someone know if they see a suspicious person.
“Students know before an adult ever will when there's a problem in their school,” McDonald said. “If you have a good climate and culture, where you've built trust with your kids, and they feel like they can tell you, they will tell you, or they'll call Courage2Report.”
Schools also alert school leaders and prepare communication to send out to teachers and families.
McDonald said schools can’t share confidential security arrangements or investigative processes, but need to be transparent with parents, students and staff.
“So much of the time, we're scared to talk. Maybe we don't want to worry people… we have to get beyond that,” McDonald said. “Our parents, our kids, our educators, they all deserve to know what's going on.”
Calvert said Kansas requires schools to conduct at least three crisis drills every year. Calvert said it’s important that schools have response plans in place and training for staff and students in the event of a school shooting.
“What we really have to realize, and especially it's hard to say after tragedies, is that our schools really are the safest place our kids are going to be that day,” Calvert said. “But it doesn't mean that we take these threats lightly.”
How do threats interrupt learning?
Whether schools decide to lock down or shut down depends on their capacity to handle a threat, McDonald said. That includes their relationship with law enforcement and how specific a threat is.
Securing a building or putting it on lockdown can interrupt student learning even if the threat isn’t credible. Families may also not feel safe sending their children to school in the days following a threat..
Attendance at the Independence School District dropped from 90.74% on a Friday to 66.74% the following week after an online threat that named several school districts in Jackson County.
Independence Superintendent Dale Herl said the district received another threat that Friday, dropping attendance to about 82%.
The state factors attendance into how much funding it sends to school districts. Herl said those absences cost the district about $225,000.
“It's actually taking away the revenue that directly goes to pay for the salaries and benefits of our teachers and our certificated staff,” Herl said.
Attendance at East Trails Middle School in Lee’s Summit dropped to 75% on September 10, before increasing back to 94.53% the following day. Other school districts saw smaller attendance declines.
Herl said the state can adapt its funding mechanism for emergencies like natural disasters, and argued it should do the same for schools experiencing threats.
Dr. Jennifer Collier, superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools, said everyone is on high alert because of threats happening nationwide.
“We want (students) to feel safe and comfortable when they're in school, and we want them to do well,” Collier said. “To have some students afraid to come — that is really a painful experience, and it's a challenge for us that we're continuing to work through.”
McDonald said he understands why parents may want to keep their student home after a threat. He said every parent has to make a decision based on how safe they feel and how their school responds to threats.
“If the school has good structures in place, and a plan, that's probably a really good, safe place to be,” McDonald said. “Those are questions that every parent should ask the school and feel comfortable and confident, because you are sending your most precious resource.”
