An incident occurred late Thursday night last week involving a juvenile who made verbal threats against another juvenile while off school campus.

Friday morning, Superintendent Charlotte Nasief made a “one-call” announcement that the threat had been taken care.

“I sent the one-call out at about 5:30 because sometimes it can take 30 to 45 minutes to get out. I wanted everyone to be able to get that call. We have some parents who leave for work early and we have some busses that are picking up kids and I wanted parents to be able to make an informed decision on what they wanted to do. If I had thought there was any chance of danger, I wouldn’t have had school, but it was over. It was over, so we needed to have school.”

Nasief said school attendance was down throughout the district on Friday.

According to School Resource Officer Ricky Marcum, the juvenile, who can’t be named for legal purposes, was charged with terroristic threating, which is a misdemeanor charge, and released back into the care of the juvenile’s mother.

“I didn’t want to be the guy who just let that go,” Marcum said. “Anymore you just don’t know. It seems to be a trending issue at the moment.”

The juvenile has been suspended from school for the time being, but whether or not the juvenile will return to school this year has yet to be determined as of press time.

Nasief said in the past the school system had played an active roll in making students feel safe at school.

“It’s ongoing for us. In the beginning when we had our safety grant four or five years ago, that’s when we got started, but that’s not to say we don’t have room for improvement,” Nasief said. “Our principals have state-mandated drills every month and we are thinking about adding more to that on a monthly basis.”

The school system, according to Nasief, has started a Safety Advisory Committee that will meet on a regular basis and include parents.

“I think its good for parents to understand exactly what we are doing,” Nasief said.

There are measures being taken now according to Nasief to help everyday in keeping students safe at school.

Nasief said staff and principals stay in the parking lot every morning until all the students are in the building.

“That’s huge,” Nasief said. “The doors at our schools and the entrances are locked all day long from the outside. Our staff is trained not to open the doors to anyone who is not identified as a school employee and visitors are requested to go sign in at the office. At all of our schools, parents or visitors have to buzz in. We have what they call a Sally Port and it prevents someone from just walking in. General things that we take for granted, that we have, that we are doing are preventative.”

The “Sally Port” Nasief referred to is a system that places those entering the building into an isolated and secure area of doors and gates before entry into the main school facility can be made.

In order to get to the next level of protection, Nasief said you would almost have to have an armored school.

“For some things, in order to prevent, you would almost have to have an armored school. We are going to continuously train and look for ways to improve our safety,” Nasief said. “We’ve had people from the state school safety and had audits on the schools. They audited the middle school and the Area Technology Center and they thought our schools were very safe.”

The Clinton County School District is proactive about school safety according to Nasief.

“They offer those audits every year and they only let you do two schools per year,” Nasief said. “We sign up every year as soon as the email comes out. We try to be proactive in a lot of things.”