Jackson School Board Discusses school closure due to possible threat
JACKSON, Mo. (KBSI) – Jackson Missouri school board discusses their decision to cancel classes on Friday September 13.
We talked to Jackson superintendent Dr. Scott Smith who tells us.
“As you all have been notified of, We were notified last night of a potential threat against our school it was made on social media.”
Smith says, “we’ve been working with the Jackson police department since last night on this matter and this morning we decided in an over abundance of precaution we decided to close school.”
Dr. Smith says the threat came from the social media platform snap chat last night, and the decision to cancel classes came around 5 am on September 13.
After multiple potential threats Thursday towards local and national schools, we asked Smith if he thought this threat was connected to the others this week.
Dr. Smith says, “you know at first we felt like it was but then as we went on they actually listed Jackson as a school district of concern so once it became listed as Jackson schools then it became more immediate to us.”
Smith says that while the threat listed Jackson, there was no confirmation which Jackson community the threat was referring to.
“Of course there’s a lot of Jackson’s in the country it was not specific on if it was Jackson Missouri or where it was at however taking safety very seriously nobody was able to either cooperate or disqualify this threat as being part of Jackson Missouri.”
Jackson school district also deciding to postpone all home sporting events for tonight and tomorrow as they continue to investigate the apparent threat.
Jackson athletic director John Martin discusses their plan to move their home games to road games due to the threats.
Martin says, “so we’re actually going to travel to Edwardsville tomorrow to play up there at 6 o’clock ironically a lot of our sports teams were scheduled to go to the St. Louis area tomorrow so what Dr smith and his team asked me to do is contact those schools to make sure they had no threats and I did that this morning.”
Smith says the district is blessed with six school resource officers on duty and have already been in contact with the local police force to be on the lookout next week.
Moving forward the district plans too have classes back in Session on Monday morning.
Smith want to remind parents and students alike that their safety is the top priority.
Smith says, “we want to remind our students and parents that school violence weather it be just a joke that is not something that we’re going to take lightly, okay, we take all threats of violence very seriously we encourage our parents to be very vigilant with your children monitor their social media have these conversations that you remind them that making a threat towards a school district is a serious issue and something they need to monitor very closely.”
