Public schools in Miami-Dade County are open as usual Thursday after receiving a threat that several levels of law enforcement have deemed “less than credible”, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, officials said early today.
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OCPS alerted parents about the threat but said classes would continue Thursday and Friday, according to news partner News 6. They notified authorities, who swept the schools with bomb-sniffing dogs and found no cause for concern, officials said.
After Houston Independent School District (HISD) told students and faculty that schools would be open Thursday, HISD called in all of its police officers on overtime Thursday morning to patrol schools. Schools in those areas and in Clark County, which educates 320,000 students, opened normally.
Two school districts in Indiana – Plainfield and Danville – closed Thursday after also receiving threats overnight.
“(Thursday) morning, OCPS staff discovered a threatening email similar to those received in other large districts, including LA, NY, Miami, Houston and Broward, where they were deemed to be less than credible”, the message said.
It’s rare for a major US city to close all its schools because of a threat.
Danville Police Chief William Wright said a third threat was posted on social media early Thursday, and it was apparently tied to the threat against Plainfield schools.
Some of the districts affected by the latest threats are among the nation’s largest – Miami ranks fourth, Fort Lauderdale’s Broward County system is sixth, Houston seventh, Orlando 10th and Dallas 14th.
Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, a non-profit school safety organization, urges schools to work in advance with police and fire services to determine plans of action while also conducting simulations of potentially violent scenarios.
In Texas, threats were received in the Houston, Dallas and McAllen school districts. They’re accused of making threats against schools in separate incidents.
Long Beach school officials received a terrorist threat Thursday – two days after Los Angeles Unified shuttered all of its schools over a similar threat – but the local district kept schools open. The district said it will resume classes January 5.
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Wright said officials are investigating and taking the threats seriously. “Upon learning of this threat, we immediately contacted the Nassau County Police Department and the Long Beach Police Department”.
