At around the same time Juneau’s Harborview Elementary School received a threatening phone call yesterday, Hoonah City Schools received one as well.
Harborview received a call threatening a school shooting at 1:21 p.m. Hoonah Schools Superintendent PJ Ford Slack says around 1:25 p.m., a call was received by the secondary school secretary “who described it as sounding like it was an automated call coming from down a long tunnel. She couldn’t pick up all the words that were said on the phone but there was clearly something about ‘attack is eminent.’ She got that.”
The school of 112 students in pre-K to 12th grade went into lockdown. Hoonah Police Department searched the building, which also houses the town’s public library, and didn’t find any threats.
The lockdown was lifted about 15 minutes later and the school resumed its normal day.
Due to an old phone system, Ford Slack says the school district doesn’t have a way to alert parents of a threat to students. She says the district plans on retraining staff on safety protocols. Overall, she said the lockdown went smoothly.
“The kids were great. They followed all the instructions so that’s a good thing. I hope we don’t have any more phone calls. I’d like to be off their phone list, but we’ll see,” Ford Slack says.
Monday’s call was the first threatening phone call Hoonah City Schools has gotten.
Juneau schools have received six phone calls threatening school shootings since April 27. Several other schools across the state have also received similar calls. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports that, as a way to combat the problem, Fairbanks North Star Borough schools’ phone system will no longer accept calls from blocked or anonymous numbers.
