Most Hughson middle schoolers return to campus after bullying threat

A texted death threat to a Ross Middle School student kept more than a dozen Hughson students home Thursday, the day trouble was promised, but this week absences are down and most appear linked to an outbreak of flu.

“We had three students here in the office throwing up violently,” said Principal Ryan Smith. Otherwise, it feels pretty normal, he added. “Students are shooting hoops at lunch and spirits seem to be great. Our kids are troopers.”

The 13-year-old target of the cyberbullying, however, is staying home. “It’s not back to normal for us,” mother Chris Fondse said Monday via Facebook message. Fondse took to social media Aug. 17 to spread word of the threat to her daughter, a chilling post telling the girl to “wachout” and “Tomorrow at Emily (sic) Ross middle school you die.”

On Aug. 18, there were 20 students absent, with 13 parents telling the school it was because of the threat, Smith said. On Aug. 19, there were 11 students out, four because of the cyberbullying. Monday, six students stayed home, only one out of concern.

But Smith does not believe a Ross student is behind the threat, he said, because despite the notoriety there has been zero chatter about it.

Law enforcement continues to seek the sender and has served a search warrant on the phone’s service provider, said Larry Seymour, chief of Hughson Police Services.

“We are still diligently working on it,” Seymour said Monday, interviewing students and waiting for word from the service provider. “It can take up to several weeks,” he said, noting the cell was a government-issued cell phone like those given out to families who qualify for social services.

“We are aggressively investigating,” Seymour said.

On the Hughson Police Services Facebook page, an update called much of the social media traffic around the incident “misinformation and factually inaccurate,” and said the threat had always been taken seriously.

“Criminal investigations take time. We want to ensure that we act fairly, objectively and that we are able to gather all of the evidence we need to make an arrest,” the post says, adding that one delay was due to the phone being turned off past the time when the first search warrant expired, requiring a second request.

“The police chief has been consistently communicating with the district to keep us informed about the investigation,” said Hughson Superintendent Brian Beck, also asking community members to have patience. “Releasing information while the investigation is ongoing very well may be counterproductive to catching the person responsible. We ask that the community have some faith in their police and school system regarding this incident being handled appropriately,” Beck said via email.

“I suspect this is a case of a middle schooler using extremely poor judgment, both choosing to pick on someone and especially how it was done and the nature of the message,” he wrote.

Knowing the trials of sixth, seventh and eighth grades, plans were already in place to focus on responsible use of technology this year – the first year students would be able to take school laptops home, Smith said.

“Long before this story broke, we were working on this,” he said. The district wants students and parents to know the ins and outs of being good digital citizens, regarding everything from cyberbullying to plagiarizing.

“This was a phone, not one of the Chromebooks, but for any type of technology that can commit this kind of cowardice, it’s worth addressing,” Smith said. The school laptops filter out social media, gambling and other types of sites deemed inappropriate for schoolwork, he said. “We feel if we’re going to use taxpayer dollars, it’s a school tool. It’s not an entertainment device,” the principal added.

“In light of recent events, this makes it all that much more important,” Smith said.

This story was originally published August 22, 2016 at 6:49 PM with the headline "Most Hughson middle schoolers return to campus after bullying threat."