Photo provided by Barbara Horzen
Carter High School in Rialto was the latest school to fall victim to a rise in local students trying to capitalize on fear with the recent school shooting in Florida. Political leaders have not helped because they have run off to their fight over guns rather than making sure people are ok. Photos of empty classrooms were popping up on social media today as parents decided to keep their kids home from school out of an abundance of caution.
Parents main fear is of the unknown, many of the comments from parents show a growing frustration with no information or information that contradicts itself. Many parents were upset that the school never called or when they did call there still were more questions than answers.
“I’m very concerned for the safety of the students. I will be up at school tomorrow at 7 a.m. with my daughter. If there’s anyone who would like to join me please do. This is going on too often at mostly all the schools. My daughter is scared to go to school and really do not want to send her to school tomorrow. But I will be up there tomorrow morning at 7am asking questions.”
“So Friday my girls said they heard some stuff around the campus about someone threatening the school but since I didn’t get any voicemail from the district I thought it was just gossip. And yesterday and the day before I picked up my daughter from the back of the school (Maple) and there was nothing going on but practice. I get them not wanting to cause panic with the kids and parents but damn tell us something.”
We spoke to Dr Avila about communication at Rialto Unified and he spoke about events such as these and the problems with not having one source giving out information:
As of this article there has been no message to our knowledge about the issues at Carter this week. We spoke to Rialto Unified Communications Director Syeda Jafri and she confirmed there was a threat made but that the student involved was contacted and deemed unable to carry out any threat. Mrs Jafri reassured us that students were never in any danger and School authorities along with Rialto Police were working on this issue once the threat was made.
One reason parents were so concerned has to do with the extreme rise in school threats locally in the last 2 weeks. As seen in the Press Enterprise article. One thing that local leaders are taking on is forming an opportunity for students and local leaders to talk and discuss how to deal with what is causing these horrible situations and how to begin to stop them.
rialtonow 