JACKSONVILLE, Fla.---Duval County Public Schools says there is a now a person of interest associated with Thursday's bomb threat at Mandarin High School. Chief of Public Policy, Dr. Tracy Pierce says following both that threat and Friday's of a potential shooting, the district is already changing how they notify parents of such events and how they respond with administration internally in the future.
“We should’ve started that communication earlier," said Tracy Pierce.
Following two serious threats, a day apart at the same school, chief of public relations for Duval County, Tracy Pierce says the district is already changing how they’ll respond in the future.
“We made some assumptions about the progress of the investigation and those assumptions did not come to fruition," Pierce said.
When school started Thursday Pierce says police already did a sweep of the building and school administrators felt confident students were safe to enter around 7.
“Not being able to 100 percent verify that it was hoax, we made the decision to evacuate the building at about 10.”
Moving students out to football stands for four hours while crews searched.
“We assumed that the process of clearing out that school would move relative quickly to what it did, it didn’t do that," Pierce said.
Pierce also said the district call system letting parents know what was going on also took longer than expected saying they have to start that process sooner.
“What we learned about yesterday was about improving our logistics with our students, improving our approach to decision making and approving our approach to communication.”
Improvements sadly put into motion after the school confirmed a text exchange from a student suggesting a shooting at the school.
“We were quite a bit earlier in terms of making that decision and sharing that information with parents, law enforcement officers came to the conclusion about wand-ing the students with the metal detectors coming into school.”
Adding the district has had debriefing on ways to further improve their communication.
Duval school police will continue to monitor the situation.
