What It's Like at School During a Bomb Threat

Emperor has been studying Latin for a bit and will go on to begin his freshman year as a Latin II student.  He'll be able to skip ahead because we are working very hard on our Latin and meeting monthly with the district's Latin instructor.

We met her today at (City Name) High School.  When we went to sign in at the front office, we saw it was CRAWLING with cops, just CRAWLING. People in plain shirts but you KNOW somehow they are cops wandering about.  We explained who we were and attendance lady said, "Oh YEAH, I know they're here for the Latin teacher!" to the suspicious cop hulking just over her shoulder with a huuuge badge on a lanyard.   So we were sent on in and told to wait on a couch near the entrance.

Not allowed to walk through the school to her room?  hmm. 

A dog was brought in.  

"Oh, lookit the cute puppy!"  Emperor was overjoyed.  I felt a little nervous...

This isn't the high school Emperor would be going to next year.  So maybe, I reasoned, they have a discipline problem here and need lots of cops.  Maybe some kid lost his cool because it's finals week. You know.  Every school has one of those kids.  But why there would be six visible in the principal's office alone for one upset kid was a bit beyond me.  

Emperor's backpack.

The teacher came to meet us and brought us back to her room.  I later learned that there was a bomb threat at this particular school and at several schools in other districts but it wasn't a credible one.  (Copycats from the LA thing maybe?)  No credible evidence of threat but they are not taking chances.

At one point during our meeting we both (foolishly) let Emperor out of our sight to go to the car to get his backpack for materials and the teacher gave him a note.  So he shows the note to the office clerk on the way out, gets the bag from the car, and then comes running in past the officers with this big ol' overstuffed backpack... sheesh.

Then the officer detained him and Emperor (being himself) demanded to know what was going on, the officer said nothing is going on, please sit here.  Smartie Pants Emperor says obviously the cop is lying to him, else why could he not go upstairs?  And what's all this he heard about a "situation?"

Would you believe it never occurred to him to show the officer the note? 

Eventually, we began to miss him and went back to the office and cleared all this up.  But we're going to have to go over, just do what the officer says then and ask questions later rule.  I'm hearing from other friends in other localities around the nation that they also are dealing with threats at school.  If you're interested, here is a local story about several schools in the metro area that were threatened via email lately.