COLUMBUS, Ohio — In the weeks following a deadly school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, senses have been heightened for parents and teachers when it comes to threats at their children’s schools.
Gary Sigrist, the president and CEO of Safeguard Risk Solutions, says the viral TikTok threats of shootings and bombings at schools, which was alleged to be carried out Friday and has shut down some districts across the country, is a trend that districts, parents and first responders need to get in front of.
“If we don’t handle these correctly now when school starts back up in January you’re going to start to see more and more of these because all [students] have to do is make a TikTok video, do something anonymous or do something [students] think is anonymous online and schools are going to respond the same way over and over,” he said.
He says students often making these threats don’t understand how big of a disruption this causes because the part of their brain that controls rational thought is not fully developed.
“We have to expect kids to make these kinds of mistakes because they’re kids,” Sigrist says.
Sigrist, whose business helps districts with planning, training and security and vulnerability assessments, says all threats are taken seriously, though not all threats are serious. With that in mind, he says those who make these threats need to be helped, not necessarily punished.
“It’s easy to say let’s expel that child, let’s get him away from everybody,” Sigrist said. “That doesn’t help the child.”
Across central Ohio this week many parents were hesitant to send their children to school not knowing the severity of the threat.
Sigrist says it’s important for parents to have those difficult conversations with their children about “see something, say something.”
School districts were proactive from Columbus to Pickerington, from Hilliard to Olentangy and Licking Heights to Newark, sending letters to parents saying they were aware of the threat, how there was no specific threat to their school system and many reassured parents of safety protocols in place.
“Absolutely,” Sigrist said. “That’s what parents want to hear is we do have a plan.”
TikTok put out a statement, Thursday, saying it is “working with law enforcement to look into warnings about potential violence at schools even though we have not found evidence of such threats originating or spreading via TikTok."