On Thursday, April 9 and Monday, April 13, Freedom Area High School received two separate bomb threats that were discovered in writing in a girls’ bathroom, located inside the school.

On April 9, a statement was made over the announcements instructing teachers to “check their emails” at 9:35 a.m. Teachers, then informed their second block students about the situation and led their classes to the middle school auditorium where most students remained until the high school was deemed safe; some chose to leave or were picked up by their parents.

“When I hear an announcement having teachers check their emails, the first thing that comes to mind is we’re having a bomb threat,” Junior Levi Bonzo said.

“In the cases of the bomb threats, we didn’t want people just to leave the building; we needed them to go to a specific location and do specific things. So that’s why we did the email, so that teachers could get that message, communicate that to students and then evacuate the building,” Principal Mr. William Deal said.

The bomb threat on April 13 came towards the end of the school day at 2:03 p.m. Once again, an announcement was made asking teachers to check their emails. AAP teachers, alongside their students made their way to the football stadium where they stayed until dismissal.

“Since it was a nice day, we chose to go to the football stadium to try and minimize the disruption to the middle school,” Deal said.

The email teachers received on April 9 included a note not to allow any students to take bags of any kind including backpacks, laptop bags or purses. Members of the administration even waited by the front doors to turn around any students who tried to bring a bag and had them put their bag in the gymnasium before they could proceed to the middle school auditorium with the rest of the school.

The April 13 email did not include the same note, which caused some faculty to allow their students to take their bags while others still followed the message from the first instance and prohibited students from taking their backpacks.

Officially, in the case of bomb threat, students are not allowed to take their bag as it’s a safety concern.

“Now, one thing that we did learn through the process when we had the threat on Monday at the end of the day is: we didn’t want you to take your bags but we do want to make sure that you know you can take keys or medication or something like that, so when you’re dismissed you can get into your house,” Deal said.

Following these two threats, signing out to use the restroom will now be more strictly enforced as will being in the hallway without a pass. Both of these initiatives are being more heavily enforced in the effort to prevent more bomb threats as the year comes to a close.