LEDGER COLUMNIST

I have a lot of compassion for administrators at the Cherokee County School District at the moment.

They're walking on a tight rope in many respects following an apparent hoax that threw Gaffney High School into disarray on Tuesday. The lingering effects of that hoax continued into Thursday.

The mere threat of school violence, as many of you have likely heard about by now, is enough to cause great concern in an age where tragedies like Columbine are still fresh on people's minds. And likely the district will face criticism, no matter how it proceeds.

Still, the ongoing questions for school district officials are many.

How do you continue to ensure student safety and provide reassurances to the parents and grandparents who entrust their children to the district's care each day?

How do you ensure that students are getting the education they need in a positive atmosphere, free from fear, that's conducive to learning?

How do you write policies to meet those needs?

And how do you respond when a new challenge comes along? They invariably will come along, too.

It's common practice in the media business to ignore hoaxes and threats for the greater good.

Reporting on school threats, be it bomb scares or what happened on Tuesday — threatening text messages bouncing from cell phone to cell phone — generally is considered to invite copycats and even more problems from the culprits who get their jollies from the attention their malevolent handiwork generates.

I agree with that thinking most of the time and thought about it considerably as we compiled information about what happened at Gaffney High School on Tuesday. My parents worked in schools and I've worked in the newspaper business long enough to know what goes on in our schools every day.

Had school continued on as normal, or had hundreds of concerned parents not converged on the school to take their children home, you likely might not have seen or heard much about the incident. But that wasn't the case.

One grandmother said her "babies" were so fearful about what was going on they called her about 14 times to come get them.

And an "Alert Now" message sent by the district to parents — a message that both sought to inform parents about what was going on and to reassure that appropriate steps were being taken — apparently didn't reassure enough.

I usually try to use my column to express a little humor.

Some things about the situation were laughable, particularly the spelling in the first threatening text message that began appearing early Tuesday morning.

While I appreciate the fact people who text often abbreviate — "you are" and "your" become "ur" in the texter's lingo — there's really no excuse for spelling "school" as "skool" or "back" as "bak."

The second threatening text was more perverse in its abuse of the English language, and so profanity-laden we couldn't show it to you in detail.

I can't, in good conscious, make light of the situation, however.

And while these threats weren't deemed credible, they cause me a great deal of concern for one main reason.

Gaffney High School isn't alone in facing this challenge. Similar text threats have been popping up in other school districts around the nation.

When something happens so frequently, the danger increases that — one day — a legitimate threat to student safety may be missed. Children's stories teach us all we need to know about that danger. If you cry wolf too many times, no one will believe you when the real wolf arrives.

I don't believe that will ever happen here. But it could happen somewhere, and that should be cause for alarm, not only for administrators and parents, but for students as well.

Some students in the district likely know who started this problem on Tuesday. And if they're not willing to tell district officials or police how all this began, I would hope they would at least go to the perpetrators, sit them down, and explain why this wasn't funny.

They should also explain why this should never happen again.

Police have told us the person or persons responsible could be hit with any number of charges, from the unlawful use of a telephone and disrupting school to the making of a terrorist threat.

I'd like to add robbery to the list of charges as well, even though it likely wouldn't stick in a court of law.

Whoever did this robbed a whole lot of their classmates, parents and grandparents of a sense of security they all deserve, as well as a lot of instruction time in the classroom.

They robbed the Gaffney Police Department of time they could spend fighting other scourges on society that aren't hoaxes.

So if anyone knows who did this, please feel free to send them a text message back to them on behalf of the entire community.

"Nok it off!"