Geneva schools subject to threatening posts

Sep. 20—GENEVA — Area schools were subject to threatening social media posts last Friday and Wednesday.

The post, shared on Snapchat, contained gun imagery and the phrase "get ready," raising alarms in the district.

Geneva Middle School Principal Kent Polen said in a letter to GMS families the post's threats were deemed not credible.

Geneva Interim Superintendent David Riley said an investigation found the threatening posts were copied from threats against other schools across the country, including Geneva, Alabama.

"When school districts come back into session in the fall, you hear about [threats] in the local media, the national media," he said. "There's always threats or school shootings that just occur."

Riley said school administrators and police should be notified of threats immediately.

"Passing it off, maybe nonchalantly, is just not the right approach any longer, unfortunately in our society," he said. "We do take all these threats and these allegations seriously. We want to make sure we are doing everything we can as quick as we can."

Riley said families should take this seriously, too.

"Families just need to talk," he said. "Families need to have a conversation with everybody within the household, just have that conversation about what you can do when you see it, the best ways we can address it rather than ignoring it."

The posts were addressed at a Geneva School Board meeting Wednesday evening.

School board member, Brock Pierson thanked the school principals for taking the issue seriously, despite the posts' bad quality.

"Given what I saw, it looked like a potato had taken a photo from 2015, had put a red marker over it and brutally misspelled the word Geneva, and the first priority of the schools was to keep everyone safe and not make it a joke," he said.