School Safety Concerns Rise As Threats Spread On Social Media

Threats of violence against schools across the state are circulating on social media and it's causing families and staff anxiety over safety.

Oklahoma City Public Schools says it has seen over a dozen reports of social media threats in the last few weeks, none of which have been deemed credible.

However, each threat has been carefully analyzed by a team dedicated to school safety. “Is it local? Is it national? Where did it come from? Is it viable? Is it credible? We try to figure that out as quickly as we can,” Wayland Cubit, OKCPS’ director of security, said.

Cubit says his department is seeing more calls than normal in the wake of a shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia.

With social media circulating threatening posts with the push of a button, the district says it understands why staff, students, and parents could feel anxious and scared. “The threats themselves have not been very specific. Sometimes it gives the initials of schools. It doesn't. And you see it reposted and retweeted and, and reshared with different school names placed on it,” he said.

Regardless, Cubit said OKCPS is prepared, not scared. “What we do is work with our law enforcement partners, the Oklahoma City Police Department, to try to identify the source of those threats,” Cubit explained.

And in the meantime, the district has a robust security system monitoring each campus. “We have more than 5000 cameras that are monitoring everything closely. And so, we become aware of a threat. We put that school, on 24-hour surveillance specifically,” he said.

All of this is to ensure empty social media threats don't hold students back. “We're going to great detail to make sure that, that the kids are safe and still get an education that they deserve,” Cubit said.

OKCPS is encouraging parents to report any potential threats they see on social media directly to law enforcement or the district, instead of resharing and reposting.

Dozens of other districts across the state have also confirmed reports of threats since the Georgia School shooting, none of which have been credible.