Dear Black River,

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we went through our safety procedures for a concern that came to us this morning.  I hope that this message helps to give clarity on some details of the concern as well as our response.

Earlier this morning, a threatening phone call came to our Middle and High School Office.  To be clear, the stated threat was very serious as the person who called said that they had a firearm and were coming to our school.

This statement immediately led to our trained and practiced response of calling 911 and making sure that all students and staff members on our campus were securely inside of our locked buildings.  A quick assessment of any off campus activities told us that we did not have any field trips to notify about the concern should they try to come back to school.  The Careerline Tech Center was notified as well to keep our students there until this situation was better understood.

The entire Black River campus was in a “Hold in Place” until the police informed us that they had reason to believe that the threat was not a real concern for harm of our Black River community.  At that time, we went back to our scheduled school day to make things as normal as possible given the stress of the situation.

To clarify, a “Hold in Place” is what used to be called a “Soft Lock Down.”  The situation is that students and teachers go about with their teaching and learning but with locked and closed doors to their classrooms and very limited and supervised travel in the hallways.  No students or teachers leave any building to go outside during these situations as we do not want any exposure to a potential threat.

We are very grateful to the Holland Police for their immediate response and thorough investigation on and off of our campus.  It gave great relief to us all to see that they were here and ready to help with any potential need.

Also, incidents like this that require any sort of security “Hold” as we had today require that student pickups for appointments and other things need to be delayed.  We appreciate the patience of parents who may come to school today during this time as our security protocols needed to be followed.  While we are glad that things seem to always have been safe here on campus during this time, we always go forward with safety in mind and an adherence to our police informed policies.

Thank you all so much for your support and understanding,

Shannon Brunink
Head of School