Clover schools leader: Gun threat, pill on bus have ‘shaken trust’

Clover schools Superintendent Marc Sosne said district leaders would work to regain parents’ trust after a backlash over the handling of two incidents involving a Bethany Elementary first-grader.

“This has shaken the trust of many parents in that community,” Sosne said Wednesday. He said the district didn’t handle the situation well and would be taking steps to make changes and to meet with parents at the school.

The situation involved a first-grader who told two other students Friday he “would bring daddy’s gun to school and shoot them if they started making fun of him,” said district spokesman Bryon Dillon.

About two weeks earlier, Dillon said, the same student brought an unknown type of pill on a school bus that was ingested by another first-grader who was hospitalized overnight as a result.

Brittany Whitlock, the mother of a 6-year-old first-grader at Bethany, said she is unhappy with the way the school district handled both cases.

“This was handled very unprofessionally,” Whitlock said. “Their main concern seemed to be the school’s reputation, and not the actual safety of our children.”

Whitlock said she was unhappy because the child involved “is still on the school bus and still in classes; the only thing I was told is that he is ‘being watched’ – which does not make me feel like my son is safe at the school.”

School officials said they investigated both incidents and handled them but have declined to provide details, citing student confidentiality.

Said Sosne: “It’s being dealt with, and that’s all I can really tell you, because he (the first-grader) has rights, too.”

School board chairman Mack McCarter and board members Sherri Ciurlik and Joe Gordon declined to comment, referring questions to Sosne.

Sosne said the shooting comment was a threat. But he said when school leaders investigated and spoke to the mother, they did not believe the threat was credible.

“The administration made the determination that it was baseless,” Sosne said. “It was a very young boy who said some things and they determined he didn’t even realize the severity of what he was saying. But it’s still a threat, there’s no doubt about it.”

Sosne and school district leaders in York and Rock Hill said they investigate student threats and determine action based on the age of the child and other factors. Those factors may include the child’s motivation to do something and whether a child has the means to carry out a threat.

“We definitely take into account the age of the child and whether or not the family has access to weapons, if it’s a weapons type of threat,” said Luanne Kokolis, associate superintendent in Rock Hill schools.

York Superintendent Vernon Prosser said a student’s record is a factor. “That’s where kind of knowing your kids comes into play,” he said.

Sosne said district leaders are talking about how they should communicate with parents in such cases in the future and how much they can share.

After the Friday incident, Bethany Principal Alison Churm sent a letter to parents assuring them the school was safe. The letter said children were taking about incidents that “were not really their concern.”

Sosne said the letter should have been worded differently.

In retrospect, he said, “we said, holy cow, that was a bad decision. ... Sometimes in retrospect you look back and say this didn’t play out the way we hoped it would.”

The incidents were not reported to the York County Sheriff’s Office, according to a spokesman.

Sosne said he was not sure why the pill incident was not reported and was uncertain if it happened on the bus or after students got off.

He said routine discipline cases at the elementary school level do not usually involve a law enforcement officer, though officers may be involved in such cases at the middle and high school levels.

This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Clover schools leader: Gun threat, pill on bus have ‘shaken trust’."