There have been more than 20 threats of violence levied at Connecticut public schools this school year, and today Ansonia schools are closed while Bridgeport schools opened late and subsequently decided to close early and cancel Friday classes.
“We’ve seen school days across Connecticut disrupted with the question of, ‘Is your school safe?'” says CEA President Kate Dias.
Dias said that the ease with which individuals can take to social media and make threats combined with the necessity for schools to take every threat seriously, particularly following the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, is creating this wave of disruption to teaching and learning.
The caution with which most districts have approached these threats is warranted, Dias added, as safety must always be the highest priority.
“The best defense is communication,” she said. “Families need to talk to their children and districts need to communicate with everyone affected about the disruptions.”
Most districts have handled threats well, but in Bridgeport yesterday there was a massive failure in communication that put students and educators at risk. The superintendent sent an email to families around 2 p.m. letting them know about threats that had been made but teachers were not notified at all until after 9 p.m.
The Bridgeport administration has already shown extreme negligence on many fronts and teachers rallied last week to draw attention to myriad issues including a shortage of certified teachers, a lack of books and working computers, chaotic and inconsistent schedules, and ineffective curriculum introduced without teacher input or training.
“This is another catastrophic failure of the Bridgeport leadership,” Dias said. ” Bridgeport teachers are so furious about this because the lack of communication meant they couldn’t do their jobs—they couldn’t protect those students and families the way they know how to and that’s the tragic disappointment. This is a continuous failure on the part of this administration to consider and respect the educational leaders in the district as partners in the safety and security of children.”
At Cesar Batallla School teachers attended professional development sessions yesterday afternoon in a glass-walled room without any knowledge that a threat had been made to their school. Edison School teachers report today that the additional police presence they were promised hasn’t appeared.
“It’s made teachers feel that administration sees them as expendable,” Dias said.
She hopes that the Bridgeport administration will drastically improve their response as they now respond to additional threats that closed schools early today and entirely for Friday and that other districts will follow best practices to keep everyone informed whenever any type of threat is made.
“We do have to notify families immediately when there’s a pending threat and we have to notify our administration and our educators—the people who are on the ground working with our families and our students,” Dias said. “If we do that we increase the eyes on the ground able to respond to threats quickly and efficiently to save lives. We know that delays in communication are dangerous. We know that peopled being unaware of threats is dangerous.”
Dias will be on the evening news today speaking about threats made to schools in Bridgeport and other districts. Watch Channels 3 and 30.
