A student at WHHS faced consequences for making threats against the school on Sept. 11 after law enforcement and administrators became concerned for the safety of students.
Precautions were taken and the situation was handled with the correct measures, such as bringing the issue up with the police. The matter was not taken lightly when brought to the attention of the administration.
“We can’t try to assume or brush it off,” Matthew Chaney, assistant principal at WHHS, said. “We really have to take these things seriously and follow the steps.”
When dealing with any threat, a big part of the administration’s response is communicating with parents. Additionally, there must be a considerable amount of communication between administration and law enforcement.
“When it comes to situations such as this, we as an administrative team are really leaning on any agencies, whether it be law enforcement or communicating with the district representatives,” Chaney said. “We have to fully address the situation.”
Likewise, when such incidents happen, administrators convene to discuss the situation with others and move accordingly with CPS as a whole.
“As an administrative team, we got together to discuss what information was presented to us from law enforcement and then we reached out to our district representatives who helped at that level to make sure we were taking the right steps to ensure the safety of all people who were involved: faculty, staff or students.”
After these steps were taken, certain measures are also utilized in the aftermath. As always, ensuring the safety of students and staff was of the utmost importance.
“So, as an administrative team, we’re working with the district because any time there’s a situation that might involve disciplinary consequences, we want to make sure that we are best supporting the student or individual involved so that we can maintain not only the academic integrity of the school but also maintain safety and security in the school as well,” Chaney said.
During the occurrence of the threat, everyone was committed to keep moving forward as they were trying to work as smoothly as possible.
“It’s one of those situations where you want to act as quickly as possible,” Chaney said.
To tie up ends on the administrative end, there were some procedures administration had to endure first.
“You must make sure that a proper investigation has been handled, the right questions have been asked, you’ve gotten the right answers and …you’re still taking all the steps that are necessary,” Chaney said.
In the end, most of the incident involved teamwork and quick, effective communication between the administrative team.
“I appreciate that we are able to work with representatives at the district level whenever we may have questions or we want to make sure that we proceed in the right way,” Chaney said. “It’s really nice that we have places to go so that we can ask the right questions in case we may not feel like we have the right answer.”