Local: Security concerns at St. Mark’s
The following showed up in my email:
Dear St. Mark’s Families,
Today at approximately 9:00 AM there was an incident reported that a threatening message was left on a bathroom stall. We followed the Diocese of Peoria and the St. Mark School response protocol. We immediately evacuated the school moving everyone to the church as well as calling police to investigate. The Peoria Police did a thorough investigation of the threat using all their resources available to deal with this type of situation. After the investigation was complete, the Peoria Police determined that the threat was unfounded.
During the entire incident Father Klamut was present in the school and/or church. He was consulted on all decisions made. The Office of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Peoria was also made aware of procedures and was also consulted.
At approximately 11:00 AM I made the decision for the students, faculty and staff to return to school. I want you all to know that the safety and security of your children is our top priority here at St. Mark’s School and always will be.
Thanks and God Bless!Â
Steve Hagenbruch
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
How many kids do you have at St Mark’s?
In the strict sense of the word … none.
The junior high (5th-8th) kids got a dressing down at an assembly later that day. The gist was that they are going to try and find who did the prank and that any future behavior like it would not be tolerated. So yeah I think they suspect it was one of the older kids tryin to be ‘funny’. It’s not.
Bomb threats aren’t funny, and that’s what it was. Want to flush your future down the toilet? Threaten to blow up a grade school.
While incidents like this are never good to read about, at least this is evidence that this kind of crap happens at all schools, not just poor, urban, black ones. Of course, those that believe that to begin with are likely never persuaded by actual evidence.
I really hesitate to make such comparisons between schools where one would “expect” bad behavior, and those where the kids come from “good families.” It’s all BS, such in the same way that when black kids do drugs, it’s wirtten off as ghetto behavior, but when white suburban kids do it, it’s considered a health issue,s youthful indescrition, etc.
Please.
Anti-social behavior is anti-social behavior, whereever it happens and whoever does it.
The difference I am interesting in seeing is how the private school deals with the perps. At D150, they typically do their best to make sure the kid “stays in school” and therefore continues to wreck the learnign environment. At St. Mark’s … we’ll see.
It was already announced that whoever did it will be immediately expelled. No word on Notre Dame, but threatening to blow up your grade school can’t look good on an application.
In other news, two kids who wrote a very similar thing in Princeton on Monday (Today everyone dies at school. Boom Boom, 1:00 clock good bye) are facing a Class 3 Felony.
Oops. Forgot the link.
http://www.pjstar.com/stories/051608/REG_BGKU4J2G.046.php
A somewhat similar event happened at St. Thomas in Peoria Heights. It wasn’t as direct a threat as this, but it’s still worth noting in relation to this occurence.
I didn’t know if it would be appropriate to expose it on my blog, but you gave me the perfect opening to do so, and so I posted about it.
http://www.theburl21.blogspot.com