Two Jacksonville Middle School students are set to receive punishment after threats of shooting up the school persisted yesterday.
Jacksonville School District 117 officials and Jacksonville Police have been dealing with threats being spread over social media of school shootings since Wednesday. The district was made aware of a list of “targeted schools” that spread through Snapchat and TikTok that had parents pulling kids from school on Wednesday, despite district officials and local police deeming the threat invalid and finding that the list was actually a part of a list for directed Title I funding through the Illinois State Board of Education.
In communication sent out last night to District 117 parents by Superintdent Steve Ptacek, a student at JMS is said to have threatened a group of students with a gun over an alleged bullying incident. A threat assessment has been performed on the student by Jacksonville Police deeming the threat to be invalid because the student never had any access to a firearm. Superintendent Steve Ptacek says the student will face serious disciplinary consequences for the statement.
Ptacek said in the release that a second student shared rumors that he saw the gun, but when confronted by authorities, said that he had not seen a weapon. Despite the confrontation, the rumor continued to spread and the student continued to spread the rumor even after the confrontation with administration and police. Ptacek says that the district is seeing this as an active attempt to disrupt school and that student will also receive discipline for the incident.
JMS administrators will be visiting each classroom today to address students and staff about the incident and report a proper standard operating procedure when it comes to valid threats to the school.
Ptacek says that the district has been actively working with law enforcement and other area districts who have received similar threats over the last two days and have deemed them all to be unfounded or false.
Parents are being asked to speak with their children about the consequences of spreading false rumors.
Threatening a school with violence is a criminal offense, even for juveniles, and can result in local jail time or fines, depending upon the severity of the threat and the amount of chaos it causes to the community.