An anonymous bomb threat was emailed to the principals of Oak Hills Elementary School and Brookside Elementary School on the evening of Sunday, Sept. 13.

OHES Principal Erik Warren and BES Principal Erin Vranesh were emailed directly. The threat was sent to at least one other school outside of Oak Park Unified School District. The threat was later determined to not be credible.

Immediately after the threat was received, OPUSD contacted law enforcement. The threat was anonymous, and sent from a do-not-reply email address, but was still rigorously investigated.

“We have to take all bomb threats seriously,” Warren wrote to the Talon. “We get the sheriff involved right away and they investigate this as a crime. Making the threat itself is a crime, whether it is real or not.”

The subsequent investigation involved investigating the email itself as well as investigating the campus to look for signs of danger.

“Out of precaution, I walked both sites with the VC Sheriff office searching for anything new or out of place at both sites. Nothing was found to be out of place or unusual,” Assistant Superintendent Stewart McGugan wrote to the Talon.

After the conclusion of the investigation, parents and staff were notified of the incident. It is district policy to keep parents and staff informed of potential dangers such as this one.

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“Locking down the campus would cause much less disruption than it would if students and staff were all due to be on campus the next morning,” Warren wrote.

In addition, what teachers and staff have learned from the current situation may help if a lockdown is necessary in the future.

“In the future, if any emergency were to close the school campus for several days during a regular year, we now have a pretty good model for how we could continue instruction,” Warren wrote.

The response to this threat may be useful in evaluating the effectiveness of the current systems we have in place.

“Whether in school or not, we frequently discuss the importance of the safety of students and staff. This was another opportunity for us to evaluate and assess our emergency preparedness plans,” Vranesh wrote to the Talon. “We deeply care about our school community and it is heartbreaking and disturbing that people choose to do horrific things like this. Despite the minor interruption this caused, we are truly grateful that everyone is safe! Thank you to law enforcement and our district administration for the prompt attention to this.”