Union complains about handling of threats

Friday, March 12, 2004 | 11:19 a.m.

The union representing Clark County's teachers chided the school district Thursday for "bungling" its response to telephone threats made against a Las Vegas middle school.

Teachers at John C. Fremont Middle School were kept in the dark about the nature of the phone calls -- made last week to 911 operators -- and were given few answers when they asked questions, Ruben Murillo, vice president of the Clark County Education Association, said.

"Teachers should not be talked down to ... or told they are overreacting," Murillo told the Clark County School Board on Thursday.

Police on March 4 arrested a 13-year-old boy, a student at Fremont, and charged him with making terrorist threats. A hearing scheduled for this morning before Juvenile Court Judge William Voy was postponed.

The boy's calls allegedly included references to "Columbine," the Colorado high school where two students killed 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives in 1999.

Murillo said administrators at the school failed to follow the district's own policy in responding to such threats -- specifically, the requirement that campuses be "locked down."

In a lockdown a school's doors are locked and students are kept inside, said Mary Ella Holloway, president of the union representing the majority of Clark County's 15,000 teachers. But at Fremont, students went outside to use the playing fields, Holloway said. Teachers were also told to stand guard duty at the outside doors but weren't told what they were guarding against, Holloway said.

The district is investigating the handling of the incident, Clark County Schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia said.