A wave of school threats hits Minnesota schools, experts say even unfounded ones impact students

[MUSIC PLAYING] NINA MOINI: And you're listening to Minnesota Now. Good afternoon. I'm Nini Moini, in for Cathy Wurzer. Here's our top story.

Two charter schools in St. Paul are closed today, and a third stepped up security due to threats of violence that have been circulating online, mainly through social media platforms, TikTok and Snapchat. The post mentioned several schools in St. Paul and throughout the Twin Cities metro. St. Paul Public Schools said in an email to parents that the threats are not believed to be credible and noted many of the posts came from outside the district. And the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension spokesperson said in a statement that the state and local law enforcement are monitoring the situation. It's not a unique one, unfortunately. Schools across the country have fielded similar threats in the wake of a recent shooting that killed four people in Winder, Georgia.

My next guest works with schools nationwide to prevent and respond to violence. Amy Klinger is co-founder of the Educators School Safety Network, and she joins us on the line. Thanks for being here, Amy.

AMY KLINGER: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: Amy, how common are these kinds of threats spreading online through social media that you're seeing?

AMY KLINGER: Well, unfortunately, they are all too common. We see over a period of years anywhere from 35% to 45% of the threats that schools have to deal with come from social media. So it's not the majority, but it certainly is a significant percentage.

NINA MOINI: And what was striking to me was this idea that it's coming sometimes from outside the community. Do you have a sense of how often they start in the community they're targeting? Or how do people choose the schools that they're targeting?

AMY KLINGER: Well, I think you have a couple of things going on. We have, over the last two years, seen an incredible increase in the amount of swatting, where people are calling in a fake report of an active shooter. And that has been a huge impact on schools for the last two years or so. We have seen that go down over the last year.

However, now in the new school year, you have this tragedy that occurred in Georgia. And that engenders a significant number of copycat sort of threats and incidents. And that's what I think is happening right now is. You're seeing the wake of that where people want to cause chaos, trauma, confusion. They want to disrupt the process. They want to undermine the confidence that people have in being safe in an environment, and threats, unfortunately, do that.

NINA MOINI: Well, and it's just the beginning of the school year, too, when you think about some of the anxieties students might already be feeling. And everybody is starting out a new year. Even when these threats turn out not to have any basis in reality, the social media threats, the swatting calls you mentioned, they point to fears that are very real. What impact do you think this has on students and everybody in the school environment?

AMY KLINGER: Well, I think it has a variety of impacts, but one that I think people don't really think about. And that is the more we focus on active shooter possibilities, the more we forget or we're pulled away from looking at things that are equally dangerous and frankly, more statistically likely to happen-- medical emergencies, severe weather events. A non-custodial parent takes a kid. You have an accident of some sort.

We're pulled away from preparing for those because we become so focused on active shooter events. But on the other hand, we also know that those do happen, and we do have to be prepared for them. So I think the danger is the trauma that students endure, the undermining of the perception of safety.

But there's the hidden cost, which is while we're focusing on one threat or one possibility, we're ignoring or not adequately preparing for things that are much more likely to happen. If a child gets hit by a bus because we don't have enough supervision and is killed, that's just as horrific of a tragedy as if it was a gun violence incident. So that's, I think, the real cost, is that we're pulled away from a more all-hazards approach to school safety.

NINA MOINI: Not to mention law enforcement pulled away from what they could be doing to help out in all--

AMY KLINGER: Absolutely.

NINA MOINI: --those resources. When you're within your work with districts, what role do you see social media platforms, like TikTok and Snapchat, playing? Do they need to be held accountable? Do they come into the mix? Or where do they stand?

AMY KLINGER: Well, I think all social media just is a means to amplify the spread or amplify the reach. So if a child stands in a classroom and says whatever threat, maybe 20 people hear it. The same child puts it on social media, and it gets passed around and passed around. And so it just has a broader reach and a broader scope.

But it also points to the need for us in schools to establish relationships and mechanisms where students can report or disclose what they see when it's something that seems troubling. It doesn't even have to be a direct threat or a direct weapon. But people look-- kids look at these things and go, I don't know. What am I supposed to do? That seems uncomfortable? So we need to have a way that students can disclose with trusted adults and build those relationships so that we can find out about them before they become this outsized thing that everybody is looking at.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, so you're talking about keep the lines of communication open with students. What else have you learned in your work that's the most effective way or some of the ways for districts and schools to both respond to these kinds of threats, but also prevent them?

AMY KLINGER: The most effective way is to make it part of our daily operations. There is nothing that's going to go on, on a given school day, that is more important than making sure everybody gets home at the end of the day safely. So I think we need to stop being reactionary all the time and just make planning, preparing, preventing violence, building relationships, all part of the thing we do every single day, not just in the heat of the moment. After an event, everybody gets panicky and starts making bad rash decisions rather than strategically and consistently looking at what we do every day.

It doesn't mean that we're in panic every day or that we're in this constant vigilance. But it just gets folded into what we do every single day, so that it is not such a trauma when a threat comes in, that kids understand we have a plan. We know what we're doing. We have relationships. We've practiced things. We've talked about them, not in a scary, traumatic way, but we are just planning for these kind of things and have worked through what to do. And I think that daily thing, not just so reactionary, will make a huge difference for schools.

NINA MOINI: And an analysis that your organization did from last school year found that threats had actually decreased compared to the previous year. I think you mentioned something about that. But when you look at false reports in the equation, violent incidents actually increased. What do the numbers there tell you?

AMY KLINGER: Well, they say a couple of things. Number one, when we have a swatting event, we categorize it as an incident because the school must respond. They can't just go, well, I think it's probably fake. They have to respond.

And when you take even those swatting incidents out, even though they went down, if you pull those out and look at just all the other violent incidents, those have increased as well. I think that the decrease in threats is not because they've actually decreased, but because we've developed this nose blind or this de-sensitivity to it, where it doesn't even get reported anymore because it's just kind of, "oh well, there's another threat."

And that's really problematic, too, when the school is so overwhelmed, and social media is so overwhelmed with all of these threats. And so it really speaks to the need for a much larger societal discussion, a parent-based discussion, a school-based discussion of, What's happening in our communities and in our families that is leading us to have kids that act out in this way? And so it's a very complex problem. I mean, there's lots that can be done, which I think is the good news. But the bad news is there is no quick fix.

NINA MOINI: Really quick before we go, Amy, what should people do if they come across social media posts threatening schools, even if they think that it may be fake or, hey, someone else will report it?

AMY KLINGER: I think that, again, that letting a trusted adult know, whether it's law enforcement, whether it's someone within the school, whether it's a parent. The lack of communication is always the problem. There is nothing wrong with having multiple reports of something so that people can look at it. To your point, you can't just assume somebody else will do it. If you see something, you should say something.

NINA MOINI: Amy, thank you so much for your time. This is so important, and we really appreciate it.

AMY KLINGER: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: Amy Klinger is co-founder and director of programs of the Educators School Safety Network.