More than 550 Thunder Mountain High School students stayed home from school Monday after three students reported a school-shooting threat on Saturday.<\/p>\n
According to preliminary attendance records provided by the Juneau School District, nearly 77 percent of Thunder Mountain\u2019s 724 students skipped school Monday. The absence rate on a typical day is between 6 and 12 percent, school district spokesperson Kristin Bartlett said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s extremely high,\u201d she told the Empire, describing Thunder Mountain\u2019s absence rate Monday.<\/p>\n
Thunder Mountain wasn\u2019t the only school affected by the alleged threat. Roughly one in three students stayed home from Riverbend Elementary School and Floyd Dryden Middle School, both of which are within a mile of the Mendenhall Valley high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were largely impacted by their proximity,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n
Even schools farther away were impacted. Juneau-Douglas High School \u201cconservatively\u201d reported an absence rate of about 25 percent, Bartlett said in an email.<\/p>\n
Juneau School District officials and the Juneau Police Department are still investigating the threat, which a Thunder Mountain High School student allegedly made late last week. Neither agency said exactly when or where the student made his threat.<\/p>\n
In information releases Monday morning, police and school district officials said the 17-year-old student, whose name hasn\u2019t been released, threatened a school shooting. JPD wrote that three Thunder Mountain students, also unnamed, reported Saturday that their fellow student \u201cwas threatening a school shooting on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Juneau School District Superintendent Mark Miller, the threat wasn\u2019t so pointed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was more of a general gun threat,\u201d Miller told the Empire in a phone interview Monday afternoon. \u201cThe school was never mentioned. It was vague.\u201d<\/p>\n
The student never said anything about \u201cThunder Mountain High School\u201d, nor did he mention a specific date, according to the superintendent.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe never said \u2018It\u2019s going to happen on Monday,\u2019 for example,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
School officials and the police won\u2019t say exactly what the student said when they interviewed him. That information is privileged under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. But both JPD and Thunder Mountain Principal Daniel Larson are still investigating the threat.<\/p>\n
For the time being, school officials have told the student not to step foot on any Juneau School District property, including Thunder Mountain High School. Police haven\u2019t taken any action against the student. They don\u2019t have enough information to arrest him or take him into custody, JPD spokesperson Lt. David Campbell said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t risen to the level of probable cause that would lead to an arrest,\u201d Campbell told the Empire Monday morning. \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing right now is more precautionary than anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Thunder Mountain and JDHS have school resource officers \u2014 specialized police officers permanently stationed in schools. JPD didn\u2019t station any other officers at either school, but it did have officers stop by other schools in the district throughout the day, according to Campbell.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have enough officers to man somebody every hour of the day at every school in the district,\u201d Campbell said. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s too early to say whether the schools \u2014 or the police \u2014 will take any disciplinary actions against the student who allegedly made the threat. Miller said he will remained trespassed from school district property until \u201ceverybody has had their say\u201d in the investigation. He doesn\u2019t know how long that might take.<\/p>\n
Until then, he said everybody \u2014 students, parents, faculty members \u2014 should stay attentive.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep your eyes open,\u201d he said. \u201cBe aware, and be vigilant.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last time Miller recalls a school in the Juneau School District receiving a threat was in April 2015, when somebody called in threats to Glacier Valley Elementary School and JDHS.<\/p>\n
Juneau Police Department officers and Juneau School District employees regularly take part in active shooter response training programs, according to Miller and Campbell.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something that we take very seriously,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cWe train for it, and we prepare for it. Thankfully, in this case we were able to get involved before anything happened. Kudos to the kids who came forward and reported a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 550 Thunder Mountain High School students stayed home from school Monday after three students reported a school-shooting threat on Saturday. According to preliminary attendance records provided by the Juneau School District, nearly 77 percent of Thunder Mountain\u2019s 724 students skipped school Monday. The absence rate on a typical day is between 6 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":17317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17316"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}