There seems to be a bi-coastal debate on whether or not the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District did the right thing in closing the entire system yesterday because of a bomb threat. The New York City school system received basically the same threat, yet they remained open.
Did LAUSD overreact and play into the jittery nerves of a public already ginned up by recent events and bloviating presidential hopefuls, or did they do the right thing by being better safe than sorry? Did New York tempt fate by staying open, or did they do a better job than LA of evaluating the situation and determining that it wasn’t a credible threat?
As you probably know, I work for a pretty large school system; the fourth largest in the nation, in fact. I imagine we get situations like this on a regular basis, but so far we have yet to be shut down completely by something like this, and I know that we have a plan in place for how to deal with it should it happen. I am sure that it would be implemented based on the knowledge at hand in the moment, not on the political climate.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bratton made their decision based on their situation, not on how Los Angeles dealt with it. So getting into a debate about who was right and who was wrong is beside the point.
What the NYC superintendent picked up in the email was the lower case “a” in Allah. He was smart enough to realize no actual Muslim would denigrate the name of his god in this way and that it had to be a hoax. Schools in California are far more jumpy, naturally, nowadays and felt they had no choice but to close up tight.