Bomb
scare evacuates P'burg school
Thursday, September 23, 2004 • By LINDA
LISANTI • The Express-Times
PHILLIPSBURG -- Not even a month into the new school
year, the Phillipsburg School District has experienced a
bomb scare.
Green Street School was evacuated Wednesday morning
after a student found a message scratched into the wall of a
girls bathroom stall and reported it to her teacher.
Security Director James P. Stettner wouldn't give
details of the threat found at 10:18 a.m., but said it
mentioned a bomb and a time.
Students were taken to the school's football field
before being bused to the middle school, which had an early
dismissal scheduled.
District staff notified parents and encouraged them to
pick up their children at the middle school after 12:45 p.m.
Those students who were not picked up were either bused home
at normal dismissal time or bused back to Green Street
School to walk their usual routes home.
As parents collected their kids, they expressed concern,
especially given the young age of Green Street's students.
The school serves grades three to five and
kindergarten.
"They're too little to go through this," said Joy
Duckworth, whose daughter is in the fifth grade. "They don't
understand what's going on."
She said she noticed something was wrong as she passed
the school on her way home from work and saw the police cars
and school buses.
At first, she figured it was a fire drill or maybe
flood-related, but her next thought was bomb scare.
Kymberlyn Duckworth said she and her classmates were
just about to go to lunch when they were told to leave. They
were scared, she said.
Sisters-in-law Paula and Carol Macialek, who have sons
in the fifth and third grades respectively, commended the
district's speedy evacuation, but criticized officials for
not notifying parents sooner.
Carol Macialek said she learned of the bomb scare while
checking a news Web site for flood updates. She immediately
called her sister-in-law, who also knew nothing until
then.
"The first thing I did was panic," Paula Macialek said.
"The school district is supposed to provide a safe
environment."
Superintendent Gordon Pethick said the district had
about seven people making calls to parents.
"We called as many parents as we could on the list," he
said, adding that about 550 students were in the
building.
Pethick praised the efforts made by the district's
staff, as well as the bus and food-service companies.
"I am very pleased," he said. "At no time was a child in
any danger."
Phillipsburg police and the New Jersey State Police Bomb
Detection K-9 unit were called in to search the building and
grounds for explosives, Stettner said. None was found and
the school will be open today.
Police officials said they could not determine exactly
when the threat was scratched into the wall. They said that
according to school officials, it was not there Tuesday
night.
The investigation will continue, police said.
Parents and school officials alike are worried that this
may be the first of many bomb scares, as was the case toward
the end of last school year.
In April, the district received four bomb threats --
three at the high school and one at the middle school. In
July, 17-year-old Deziray Cunningham was given a two-year
suspended sentence and ordered to make restitution of $3,186
and spend time in a residential treatment program for her
role in the threats.
Paula Macialek said she thinks it's likely there will be
more.
"It's very possible," she said. "Now, they're picking on
the little kids."
Pethick said the concern exists. He plans to address the
students of Green Street in the near future to stress how
serious this situation is and how this impacts the
educational process.
"Anytime you have children missing school for something
like this, it concerns me," he said.
Copyright 2004 The
Express-Times. Used with permission.
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