School bomb threat proves empty

The Enterprise — Jo E. Prout

Safe schools: Voorheesville Middle School, above, is connected to Clayton A. Bouton High School, to the left. Both schools were evacuated on Tuesday after a bomb threat was discovered written on the wall of a bathroom stall. No bomb was found, and students returned to class in the afternoon.

VOORHEESVILLE — Middle and high school students and staff briefly evacuated their buildings on Tuesday after students found a bomb threat penned on a bathroom door.

“We don’t have a suspect yet. We’re pushing the leads. We have cameras,” Superintendent Teresa Thayer Snyder told The Enterprise on Tuesday afternoon.

“A student found a note on the bathroom door that said there was a bomb in this school,” she said. “The students who found it immediately went to the dean of students, Nadine Bassler.”

According to Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, the note, “There is a bomb in this school,” was written on the wall of a bathroom stall.

Snyder’s staff first evacuated students and faculty from the high school, where the threat was found, to the Performing Arts Center in a wing off of the middle school, leaving middle school students in class.

“We guessed that it was OK,” she said of the center, which is not part of the high school. “The note said it was in ‘this’ school,” Snyder said.

Buses later took middle school students to the elementary school, according to emergency plans already in place, Snyder said. The buses then returned and took all high school students to St. Matthew’s Church in Voorheesville, also according to emergency plans, she said.

The Albany County Sheriff’s office responded and coordinated with several other agencies, including police from Albany, Troy, Schenectady, the University at Albany, the Transportation Security Authority, and the New York State Police, Apple said in a press release.

“All of them worked well together,” Snyder said.

“It was very well done. It was very, very impressive,” she said. “We had seven dogs here. It really made the search expeditious.”

The dogs found nothing, she said.

“We decided to bring the students back. We were very pleased. The children were safe,” Snyder said. The district activated its communication system to contact parents.

“I asked parents not to come,” Snyder said, adding that most complied and kept the situation from becoming chaotic.

Snyder said that the school had not previously encountered a bomb threat.

“We’ve done lots of drills,” she said. “I’ve never had a live evacuation.”

Snyder praised her staff “across the board” for the “effort that went into protecting the children.”

“Everybody did what they were supposed to do,” she said. “We had complete control of the student body. We also got all the children back to school.”

Students returned in time for lunch and continued their day on a two-hour-delayed schedule, she said.

More New Scotland News

  • The village property tax rate is set to increase 2.25 percent next year, from about $1.32 per $1,000 of assessed value this year to approximately $1.36 per $1,000 next year. The entire village has an assessed value of about $264.5 million, of which about 92 percent is taxable, and is up from $262.5 million.

  • David Ague was arrested by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office for unlawful surveillance after a staff member at Voorheesville Elementary School discovered a cellphone on April 9 that Ague allegedly planted in a staff bathroom in order to record people. 

  • Atlas Copco is seeking permission from the village of Voorheesville to build a six-story, 63,000-square-f00t addition to its current 101,000-square-foot facility.

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