Schools Try to Discourage Bomb Threats

April 5 -- Bomb threats are continuing to plague American schools two years after the Columbine High School shootings, and schools across the nation are searching for new ways to discourage them.

There have been more than 5,000 school bomb threats since the April 1999 massacre in Littleton, Colo. States that track bomb threats reported sharp upturns after Columbine, and the threats keep coming: organizations that monitor school violence have recorded more than 100 in the last two weeks.

School administrators and students are fed up.

"This is a tremendous nuisance. This is a tremendous disruption to our educational program," said Donald Howard, superintendent in Harrison, N.Y., where a vague phone threat recently forced the closure of all six public schools.

The Hillsborough School District in Tampa, Fla. has held "Stop the Bomb Threats" rallies at its schools to draw attention to the problem.

"This needs to end right now," student Coleen Pagano said at a rally at Tampa's Sickles High School, which has had 10 threats this year, each of which required evacuating the school.

"We don't have to come in feeling scared, we don't have to come here worrying if this is going to be our last day," another student told the crowd.

Bomb Days

Potts Grove High School in Pennsylvania has had so many bomb threats this year that administrators are considering having "bomb days" at the end of year to make up for them.

The school has already tightened security, banning students from parking their cars in the school lots and requiring that book bags be transparent or mesh, so the contents are visible.

Pennsylvania, one of the states that tracks bomb threats, recorded 309 bomb threats in the month after Columbine, compared with 60 in the three years prior.

Law enforcement officials suspect the wave of threats has been sustained by the series of school shootings — and the media attention given to them.

"Whenever there is one of the spectacular events we get hit with bomb threats right afterward," said Corey Duber, senior director of security for the Wake County School District in Raleigh, N.C., which has also experienced a rash of bomb threats.