WHA district faces threats

Superintendent McClarty says schools have implemented precautions

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

May 29, 1999

By Devlyn Brooks

Walker and Akeley school buildings implemented strict security measures Thursday and Friday due to two threatening messages written on a school bathroom wall earlier this week.

Walker-Hackensack-Akeley Superintendent Boyd McClarty said Friday that one threatening message had been written on a boys' bathroom stall in the district's junior high on Tuesday sometime just before the close of school or afterward.

It was removed Tuesday night, and a second threat replaced it on Wednesday.

The first message read: "Everyone iz going 2 die 6-3-99 just like Colorado. Thiz iz a warning. KKK." The second read: "You were warned."

McClarty said the school district started preparing to take precautionary steps immediately after the first incident was detected, and he added the second message, in fact, may have been written Wednesday at the same time school staff were meeting about the first incident.

The district sent letters detailing the security measures to be taken home with children Thursday. He added those measures will be executed through the close of all classes next Friday.

Steps taken by the district included:

• Staffing the W-H-A middle school in Akeley and the elementary/high school facility in Walker each with a police officer.

• Having staff and community volunteers monitor hallways and school entrances during period breaks and during class.

• Allowing entry to facilities through only one entrance, while keeping others locked.

• Forbidding middle and high school students from bringing coats, backpacks, purses and duffel bags into school.

• Allowing kindergarten through third-grade students to bring backpacks if they were immediately turned over to a teacher for inspection.

• Issuing no passes for students to the school administrative offices, nurses' offices, libraries or bathrooms during class time.

• Allowing students to take tests in other classrooms only with written permission and teacher confirmation.

• Allowing students use of only the cafeteria, cafeteria commons area and gymnasium during noon hour.

• Performing two locker searches to make sure there were no weapons in the school.

• Implementing security measures on the district's school buses.

• Announcing any act of violence will result in out-of-school suspension for the individuals involved.

"Some people may say later that this was only just graffiti," the superintendent said. "But the reality is that those things do happen, can happen and will happen. And we cannot be anything but dead serious about this."

McClarty said parents were given the option of holding their kids out of school with excused absences Thursday and Friday. He added that students missing tests because of the absences would be given an opportunity to make them up.

The W-H-A School District and community residents are offering a combined $3,000 reward for information bringing a positive conclusion to the incidents, McClarty said.

"The community is taking this very seriously, as well as we are," he said. "Obviously, we'd like to catch the person or people who are responsible for this."

On Friday, normal activities took place in the district with the seniors enjoying a school graduation rehearsal in the morning. They were finished by noon and released.

Classes for the other students continued Friday, with fourth- through 11th-graders finishing school Thursday and elementary students finishing Friday.

"With graduation and other activities, it's created the situation where we had to prepare for a prolonged period," he said. "We are faced with huge security problems."

The Walker Police Department is handling the investigation.