A local mother has transferred her kids in and out of Lawrence Public Schools within one semester because of incidents jeopardizing their safety and well-being — most recently, the district’s handling of a threat against her son.
“I was shaking mad,” Samantha Cole said. “The way the principal worded things and handled the situation was completely outrageous to me.”
Cole’s son and two daughters transferred to Lawrence High School from Ottawa at the beginning of the year.
Cole said her son, a freshman at LHS, received Snapchat messages from another student during school Tuesday. In the messages, the student told him to kill himself and that he would supply the gun. Cole’s son responded asking what he meant and told him he wasn’t afraid of him, to which the student responded by telling Cole’s son to watch his back on Thursday.
Cole’s son was alarmed and sent screenshots to his mom. She said she called the school office on her way there.
“I couldn’t get dressed fast enough, and I rushed up to the school,” Cole said.
Cole said LHS Principal Quentin Rials told her the school planned to reprimand the other student but had not yet. They told her the student had been in trouble several times before, she said. Cole did not personally get the police involved because the school resource officer said they were handling it.
Thursday was the last day of school before the holiday break, and Cole’s son had three more final exams to complete. Cole said Rials decided to isolate her son in a locked room while he took his tests.
We emailed questions about the incident to Rials and district spokesperson Julie Boyle. Rials did not respond. Boyle in her email response did not address a question about Rials’ rationale with the decision to isolate Cole’s son.
Boyle responded Friday afternoon, with Rials copied, that LHS administrators and Lawrence police had investigated the report on Tuesday and “It was determined from their detailed follow up with both the students involved, and their families, that the threat was noncredible.”
Boyle said that “disciplinary action was taken in accordance with board policy” but that details are confidential. Cole said Friday evening that she had not been updated on that.
During a phone call Wednesday, Rials made a comment to Cole along the lines of, “Your son’s intuition would let him know if something was off and then he would need to come to the office,” Cole said.
“The whole intuition thing just blew my mind,” she said. “So you’re just telling me that you think that any school shooters beforehand and all these kids just had really cruddy intuition? How insensitive.”
In her email response, Boyle did not address a question about whether Rials said that and what he meant.
Cole said her son was familiar with the student who sent the messages but didn’t know him personally nor did he know the reason for the threats. They didn’t have classes together, and the most they’d interacted was seeing each other in the hallways, Cole said.
Cole made a post to a Lawrence Facebook group Wednesday afternoon that quickly garnered lots of attention. She said Rials told her during their phone call later that day that as a result of her post, concerned parents were calling the school to pull their students from class. Rials asked her to take her post down, she said, but she declined. Boyle did not respond to a question about that.
As the district deals with a surge in gun threats and rumors, and school shootings continue in communities across the country, Cole said she feels LHS administrators did not respond appropriately.
“We have, you know, children that are not here anymore and teachers that are not here anymore, because we’re not taking things like this seriously,” Cole said.
Cole said she had already pulled her daughters from the Lawrence school district after an unsafe situation in which police were involved, though the family did not want to share details of that situation publicly.
She said her transfer request back to Ottawa had been approved and that her son will attend there beginning in January.
Boyle said safety is the district’s top priority.
“These actions of rapid response as issues emerge, completion of a thorough investigation in partnership with the Lawrence Police Department, and follow-up steps, including threat assessment, home visits as appropriate, and disciplinary processes as prescribed in Board policy and state law are consistent across all of our schools when concerns arise around student safety,” she said via email.
On Wednesday afternoon, Rials sent an email to LHS families, telling them the administration and the school resource officer investigated the situation and that their students were safe. At the end of the email, he wrote that “On a positive note, we had a wonderful day with your students at school today, filled with engaging activities and learning opportunities.”
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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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