Gwinnett County Schools reported that amid the frenzy of threats to schools that the Florida school shooting spawned, several of its students tried to set another student up to take a fall for a false threat.
A letter to parents from Principal Jeff Mathews explained what happened. It says:
I am writing to you today about a troubling incident that occurred at (Peachtree Ridge High School) today involving social media and some disappointing actions by some of our students. Earlier today, we received information that a student may have been planning a violent act at school. This information was posted on social media along with photos of the student. As you can imagine, these social media posts spread rapidly among students, causing concern for many in our school community. We immediately contacted our School Resource Officers who began an investigation. First, let me share that based on the information gathered in the investigation there does not appear to be any threat.
While that is certainly good news, what is extremely troubling is that it appears that a group of students used social media to implicate this student. That said, we will be taking disciplinary action against students involved. In today's world, it is awful that our students, teachers, and parents have to worry about threats at school. However, it is even more troubling that there are individuals who would feed off of these fears to try to falsely accuse another student of making threats. Thankfully, this only involved a very small group of students. As disappointing as this is, I am thankful that a large group of students were very helpful in providing information that allowed us to track these posts and those who were using social media to create issues for another student.
I am very concerned about this behavior and encourage you to talk to your
child(ren) about this situation. There is a responsibility that goes along with using social media and students should know that if they misuse social media and it creates a disruption at school that they can and will face discipline consequences at school. Thank you for your continued support.
