School districts scrambling to deal with outbreak of threats
Kentucky School Advocate
December 2015
By Madelynn Coldiron
Staff Writer
Burgin Independent, a tight-knit, single-building PS-12 school district of just over 500 students, is an unlikely target for a threat.
So it surprised Superintendent Martha Collier when students reported a scrawled general threat in a boys restroom stall at the end of the school day, Oct. 21. What surprised her even more was when she learned that a couple of other students had seen it the night before but didn’t report it because they thought it was a joke.
“That was concerning – that they saw it on the wall and they didn’t take it seriously,” she said.
The investigation by the school district and Mercer County Sheriff’s Office was made more complicated because of that information – many more hours of hallway security camera video had to be reviewed as a result. And because the school had hosted two teams in a volleyball tournament the night before, “that just added more layers,” Collier said. “It just seemed like the more we investigated it, the more confusing it became.”