Stillwater Junior High Shooting in Oklahoma, not Minnesota

Officials in School District 834 want residents to know all is well at Stillwater Junior High.

District officials received a phone call from a resident this morning asking about a shooting at Stillwater Junior High, but that was news to School District Communications Director Carissa Keister.

So Keister did an online search and saw media outlets in Stillwater, Oklahoma were reporting a shooting at Stillwater Junior High.

So to be proactive about the incident, Keister posted this message on Facebook:

“Media outlets in Stillwater, Oklahoma are reporting a shooting at a junior high this morning. Please know ... This is not our Stillwater Junior High. All is well in Stillwater, Minnesota. Our thoughts are with students, staff and families in Oklahoma today.”

Stillwater Junior High also sent out a voicemail recording to parents this morning.

The message was posted on Facebook and sent out via voicemail in an effort to be proactive, Keister said.

“If parents were on their way to work and heard of a shooting at Stillwater Junior High on MPR, we just didn’t want people to panic,” Keister said.

In the technological age of Twitter, Facebook and Google alerts it’s easy for people to see something and worry—“so we wanted to be proactive.”

Keister said the school district get calls from people in Oklahoma all the time asking questions about schools in Stillwater, Minnesota. But this was the first time officials realized there was a Stillwater Junior High in Oklahoma, too.