Wyandotte Superintendent Stands Behind the Handling of Bomb Threat at Roosevelt High School

Wyandotte school Superintendent Carla Harting said officials handled at appropriately, despite some parents who say otherwise.

After two students found a bomb threat written on a wall in a boys’ bathroom at about 10:25 a.m., the school was put on lockdown, meaning classroom doors were locked and students were precluded from leaving their rooms until the all-clear was given at about 11:15 a.m.

Parent Renea Blaszczak was amongst several people who criticized school officials for not removing the students from the building during the ordeal and for taking too long to notify parents of the situation.

“Getting an email four hours after the fact does not help me one bit knowing my kid is on a lockdown from a bomb threat,” she wrote on the Wyandotte Patch Facebook page. “Why would you keep kids in school looking for a "possible" bomb? What happens next time there’s a real bomb? Are the parents gonna get an email saying our kids are either dead or seriously injured four hours after the fact? … I’m sorry, but Roosevelt needs better "protocol" than what they have now.”

Margaret Sharon-Hoste, who works for Wyandotte Public Schools as a paraprofessional at , said she questions why students are kept inside the very building that received the threat.

“I could never figure out the rationale of lockdown for a bomb threat,” she wrote on the Wyandotte Patch Facebook page. “Seems to me you would evacuate.”

Harting contends a lockdown is an appropriate first step and said never rose to the level where an evacuation was necessary.

“When you get a threat, you don’t know where the bomb is located,” she said. “That’s why you call . … If they had determined it was a credible threat, we would have evacuated. However, they determined the threat not to be credible within 45 minutes.”

More often than not, Harting said, actual bombs are placed outdoors rather than indoors. And the ones that are inside a school, she said, are usually in hallways, not classrooms.

“Leaving the building would put students in more possible harm,” she said. “We really feel the classrooms are the safest place in this situation.”

Harting said emails were sent out alerting parents of the situation as soon as it was feasible to do so. An email from Roosevelt Principal Patrick Hickey obtained by Wyandotte Patch shows it was sent to parents at 2:11 p.m.

The email reads:

This morning, two students reported a written statement found on a bathroom wall using the word “bomb”.  The building was put into immediate lockdown per district and building protocol; the police were called to assess the seriousness of the threat.  The Chief of Police, Detective Sergeant and Patrol Officers arrived and determined that the threat was not credible and approved lifting the lockdown.   

I appreciate the professionalism of our entire staff and the maturity of our students during the lockdown.  We would also like to thank the Wyandotte Police Department for their immediate response and assistance.

Police and school officials continue to investigate who made the threat.

"If we determine who did this, they will be prosecuted," Harting said. “We have no tolerance for these sort of actions.”