Our Response to Threats & Crises

There will be times that we are made aware of social media or other threats of violence at our schools, and there will, unfortunately, be crises that impact our students and the Shoreline School District community.

While we never wish for situations like this, our district and law enforcement partners have collaborated and will continue to collaborate to respond as quickly as possible. Our primary objective when facing these situations is to maintain the safety of every single student and staff member in our care. We will follow law enforcement guidance on the credibility of a threat when determining actions to take, which could include canceling school, increased police presence on campus, or other safety and security measures.

When it comes time to share about a threat or crisis situation, the timing and depth of information might not meet the expectations and wishes of every family. We understand the desire to have as much information as possible about any situation that may impact your child, especially when it comes to safety. However, we are often not able to share those details with you, even as we empathize with the desire and need to have information in order to make decisions as a family.

When someone makes a threat that impacts our schools, we act immediately. Action involves gathering facts, collaborating with the police department and other important partners, creating messages that follow legal and ethical guidelines, and distributing those messages to staff and families.

Here is a bit more information to share  with you about each stage of this process:

• Gathering the facts: Our school and district leadership work closely with the Shoreline and Lake Forest Park Police whenever there is a threat or crisis that affects a school. We do not make decisions based solely on rumor or conjecture. Each threat is thoroughly investigated to determine its credibility. That process can take time, because it can involve search warrants, interviews, home visits, and more.

This can be one of the most difficult times for families and often produces the most anxiety and fear. You may have heard of a situation from your child, but as it is investigated, you likely will not receive much information from official sources like the school, district, or police department. This is intentional, because communicating before we have all of the facts can delay or impede the investigation and unnecessarily escalate a situation.

This stage of the process likely doesn’t feel good to you, and it doesn’t feel good to us, either—we want you to have information as soon as possible. We rely on you to trust us, and have patience, during this time.

• Create messages that follow legal and ethical guidelines: State and federal law, as well as district policy, restrict what information is public about students and investigations. When it comes to students, very little information can be shared publicly—and districts must comply with data practices and investigatory requirements. That means we are often unable to share any information about a student who is involved in an incident, including whether they are a student at our school, whether they are attending on a certain day and any disciplinary action they will receive.

Even if that weren’t the case, though, there are instances in which we wouldn’t want to share all of the information. We exist to support children—and the fact of the matter is, children are learning and growing every day. Along the way, they make mistakes, just as we all did growing up. Students will be held accountable, and they still deserve dignity even when their mistakes are big. Keeping them accountable for their actions—which we do, according to our student rights and responsibilities and district policies—is different from sharing information about their mistakes publicly.

In a moment when you don’t have all the information you want to have, please know we are making decisions to keep our students and staff safe, hold people accountable for their actions, and when possible, help them to learn from their mistakes. To do this most effectively—and legally—we cannot share most of the details that could make some families feel better in a scary situation.

• Distribute messages to affected staff and families: Once we (and the police department) gather facts and develop appropriate messages for each unique situation, we begin a second period of reviewing those messages for any inaccurate or misleading information, having them reviewed by law enforcement and our legal advisors as needed to be sure we comply with legal requirements, and then putting messages into our mass communication systems and sending them. You should know that while you wait to receive a message, there are often many school leaders, district administrators, law enforcement, and legal professionals working as fast as they possibly can to get information to you. It matters to us that you are informed as fast as possible, and we ask for your understanding as we make that happen. And, if at any point during this process you decide not to send your child to school, we support your right as a parent or guardian to make that decision.

Unfortunately, threats and crises are likely to continue across our country and in our own backyards for the foreseeable future. When these stories receive attention from the media or schools are forced to close, it emboldens the people who make non-credible threats, and they continue. 

Here’s how members of our district community can support in times of threat or crisis:

1. Trust us, and our law enforcement partners, to keep your children safe at school. We all receive extensive training and practice emergency response so we are prepared to manage these situations. Our decisions are based on facts and deep situational understanding.
2. Have conversations with your children about social media and their digital citizenship, and actively monitor their online activity.
3. Continue to keep us informed any time you learn of information that could affect student or school safety. We take all reports seriously, investigate them, and take appropriate action.
4. Show grace and practice empathy. Being a school staff member can be one of the most rewarding and the most challenging careers—and our Shoreline Schools staff go far above and beyond for our students, families, and one another. In critical situations like these, we ask for our community to support our staff members just as they support our students each and every day.