Ok so what about letting people around the school know??? I live 2 houses away and watch kids in my in home daycare. I knew nothing about this till that night!

i am a former student of craig, i graduated 2 years ago year, now im serving over in afghanistan for the army. my job is classified as EOD all we do is look for bombs and destory them in afghanistan. we spend most of our time studying bombs of any kind of any shape along with finding them. i will tell you now that would be impossible for a kid almost to get his hands on the ingrediants he would need to make a small containable bomb that could be only spotted by a trained eye. you could send me to hell if i was wrong. but ive spent a year out here already and im confident in what i know and do. we go through a year of training. also if it wasnt a student , i very highly doubt it they would go and write the note in the bathroom, they would most likely phone the school or some kind of other attention getter than that. people really need to get their heads out of the movies and move back into reality. that doesnt take a genuis to understand that much.

I think it was handled perfectly - best purchase made by JSD was the phone system.

Dont ANYBODY confuse me with that other wanna be tired guy listed below.

The idiots that write these threats in schools really need to get a life. My son attends Craig. He was at an emergency dental appointment during the time this took place. I was relieved but he was disappointed he missed it. Go figure!! I did receive my two phone calls, which was awesome. He also brought home a letter explaining why they evacuated into the field house. Because of a school shooting down south several years ago that started as a bomb threat just to get the kids outside so they could be an easy target, the officials at Craig decided to keep them inside after a search of the gym. Will that work the next time something like this happens? Who knows. It worked this time. Where are 1600 kids supposed to go? Roosevelt and St. John Vianney? What would the alternative be? Surround the building with SWAT and bring in 40 buses to load up 1600 kids?

billnebie: Get a life.

billnewbie: as tibetrin has already stated, evacuation is NOT 100% safe and is therefore not "the only safe choice to make." The purpose of a fake bomb report may be so get people to exit the building so they become targets of snipers. A person with a semi-automatic rifle can do a lot of damage to a tightly packed group of people.
We need to eliminate the "cute" little practice of calling in bomb threats.

Yikes, was that a diatribe or a manifesto?

I wonder Coach, if the search for the bomb in the fieldhouse was faulty, the bomb going undetected by the novice bomb searchers, the fieldhouse then filled with students after the searchers confidently declaring the fieldhouse clear and then the bomb detonated, would the mourners of the slain be comforted by assurances that the fieldhouse was thoroughly and sincerely searched by untrained personnel when a safe alternative (evacuation) was available? Fortunately this threat was a fraud. But since no bomb was found, we have yet to determine whether the amateur bomb searchers would know a bomb from a volleyball. Are we really willing to risk the lives of our children on the assurances that they really would know a bomb if they saw it? Next time the bomb may be real. Evacuation is the only safe choice to make. Now any bomber with a desire to kill with a bomb knows that if he hides it well in the fieldhouse, that is where the students will be lead like lambs to the slaughter.

From what I have heard and read Craig h/s and the city of Janesville gets an A+ .... I got my two auto/phone calls letting me know my son was safe ... and yes "tierd of whining" I'm sure i'd even know what a bomb would look like, so please change your name to "i'm not tierd of whining yet" please.

tiredofwhining,
Who's to say that someone couldn't put a false message on a bathroom wall or send in a note stating there is a threat....then once the children and staff exit the building.........they become targets.
It's happened that way in the U.S. I would rather see the school err on the side of caution and ensure my childrens and everyone elses childrens safety. I also love the new automated phone messaging system.

How many years has this been a going concern? With bomb threats in Janesville Schools, now?
Spend the money and get a key-card entry mechanism installed, to enter the restrooms. Get it over with once and for all. Make sure they know some type of identification apparatus is in place, not to graph their bowel movements but to let them know that bomb threats on bathroom stalls WILL NOT BE TOLERATED anymore. And be sure to implement this for staff, also.

Well said fbcoach! Could not agree more.

As a teacher at Craig High School and reader of the gazetter, I can tell you (tired of whining) that you have no clue what you are talking about. The previous response (old short story) tells how the field house (ie new gym) and all surrounding rooms where searched FIRST (read the story) then students were sent to the field house. So they were sent to a safe location.
*****
What qualifies staff members to go on a bomb hunt? Any bomb would not be some small "movie gadget", anyting built buy a kid would be large enough to be suspicious. So, staff see something suspicious and you tell the police who where also there and let them deal with it. Are you now going to say the Janesville PD bomb department isn't qualified?
******
The students where ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS the entire time. No panic, no backtalking, well behaved, positive and up beat all the time across the board. I've never been more proud to be a Cougar!!!!

So there is a bomb threat and the kids are shuttled to the gym inside the building? If there is a possibility of a building blowing up shouldn't it be evacuated? And what qualifies staff members to go on a bomb hunt? Shouldn't a qualified professional be called? Things that make you go hmmm....