Faced with escalating rumors that Maryland schools will be hit by violence Monday, education officials are taking extraordinary steps to calm parents and students -- even postponing statewide achievement tests scheduled that day.
State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick announced yesterday afternoon that standardized MSPAP testing for 120,000 third- and eighth-graders would be delayed until Tuesday.
The delay, she said, would provide students a stable routine for the five days of testing.
She and Gov. Parris N. Glendening urged parents to send their children to school Monday, and not to kowtow to rumors that have flooded school and police offices with calls.
"I want parents to see for themselves, as they drop their children off, that our schools are safe," Glendening said in a prepared statement.
But signs of concern were everywhere, as school administrators and police handled hundreds of calls about the rumors.
Some districts, including Howard County, unveiled plans to station police in high schools. Montgomery County administrators said they will sleep in high schools Sunday night as part of weekend-long security plans.
Law enforcement officials, meanwhile, are mystified about the origins of the rumors gripping parents, teachers and students. Local, state and even FBI agents said yesterday that they have no evidence of any attacks planned for May 10 -- which rumors have dubbed "bring your gun to school day."
"There is nothing to indicate that there is any reality to this," said Special Agent Peter Gulotta, an FBI spokesman in Baltimore."We are keeping up with all the information from local agencies and there is no basis for these threats; no direct evidence that anything is going to happen."
Still, school officials and police are taking the rumors seriously.
At an afternoon news conference in Baltimore, Grasmick sought to assure parents that all schools will be in session next week -- amid unprecedented security arrangements.
Urging Marylanders not "to buy into this sensationalized hype," she noted that there was no evidence of danger and not even anything about May on the Internet, as many students and parents seem to believe.
Grasmick denied that Maryland School Performance Assessment Program testing is being delayed out of worry that widespread absenteeism would send scores plummeting. Absent students are scored as zeros on the MSPAP test -- whose results are widely viewed as a measure of school quality.
Marley Middle School Principal John Kozora doesn't think anything will happen Monday, but he fears that many students will stay home in Glen Burnie, where three high school students were arrested last week and charged with making bomb threats and owning bomb components.
"Any kind of absenteeism results in zeros on the test," he said. "So in that regard it could be disastrous for the state."
The wild rumors of schoolhouse attacks began circulating immediately after two teen-agers gunned down 12 classmates and a teacher in Littleton, Colo., April 20. School officials and police everywhere, including in Maryland, have stepped up school security sweeps and arrested dozens of students. But the most prevalent rumor in Maryland has been that May 10 would bring mass destruction.
Montgomery County authorities said the reference to May 10 first appeared locally before the shootings in Littleton. On a wall in a boys' bathroom at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, someone scrawled the warning, "Fear May 10."
After Littleton, a parent e-mailed other parents to remind them of the warning. Students picked up the message and e-mailed each other. The rumor snowballed.
"The number of outright threats, real and imagined, have intensified, especially among those schools that experienced bomb threats and pranks," Montgomery schools Superintendent Paul Vance wrote in a memo to the school board yesterday. Students and teachers reported to police and administrators that the threats were posted on Internet Web pages.
But police are confounded. "We haven't been able to find anything," said Detective Sgt. Phil Metz of the state police Criminal Intelligence Unit, where about a half-dozen analysts and troopers are searching the Internet.
School officials have gone on the defensive, nonetheless. Administrators in the 23 high schools in Montgomery County are planning to spend Sunday night in their buildings.
At Sherwood High School in Sandy Spring, Principal James Fish and his staff will sleep in as part of a security plan.
"Some people think I'm over-reacting, but I know what it will take to keep the calm with my parents and kids," he said.
In Montgomery County, a police officer is being assigned to patrol each of the 23 high schools on Monday and other schools will see beefed-up security patrols, said Evans.
But parents remain wary.
"She's definitely not coming to school," said Randy Nastasi, referring to his sixth-grade daughter Kelli, who attends Marley Middle School. "Why tempt fate. My whole outlook on the thing is that it's my child's life. Why should I take any chances?"
In Howard County, Superintendent Michael E. Hickey said "rumors and hysteria" about a possible attack on an unidentified school were "rampant and growing."
He said his office had been inundated with hundreds of calls from concerned parents over the past two days. Hickey sent a letter home with students assuring parents that the schools are safe but acknowledging rumors about a schoolhouse attack. Police Chief Wayne Livesay said officers will be placed in the county's 10 high schools Monday to "bring reassurance to parents and students."
At Perry Hall Middle School in northeastern Baltimore County, pupils were wearied by two weeks of disruptions and wary that the threats could be real.
"I think it's stupid -- it's not cool at all," said seventh-grader Bridget Katsafanas.
Her friend Ashley Jones had a more personal view.
"I thought it was stupid at first, but when I got a bomb threat in my locker, I was scared," she said yesterday after school. The two girls said a lot of students had bomb threats left in their lockers in the past week.
In the past week, Baltimore County police have been called to schools for threats of bombs, explosions and violence almost 50 times, police spokesman Bill Toohey said. The calls peaked on April 30, when officers were called to 14 schools. Seven calls a day came in during the first three days of this week.
At Perry Hall High School, one student was arrested and charged with making a bomb threat yesterday. The student, who was not identified because he is 16, was arrested after Principal Brian Gonzalez offered cash for a break in the case.
"The principal made an announcement over the public address system, expressing his frustration about these disruptions and offering a $200 reward for information on who did it," Toohey said.
Within an hour, two students told officers at the school that a third student had left the note. The officers found the student, questioned him and found a second threatening note on him, Toohey said.
Similar arrests were made yesterday in Glen Burnie after two 15-year-old boys were caught slipping a note threatening a bomb under the door to the guidance office at Glen Burnie High School, said police spokesman Lt. Jeff Kelly.
On Monday, police plan to step up patrols in schools, but many parents said they still will probably keep their children home.
"It's a pretty scary feeling," said Sally Hopkins, waiting for her 12-year-old grandson outside Bates Middle School in Annapolis yesterday. "You used to expect your children to come home safe from school but you can't anymore. I have four grandchildren in school and I'm concerned every day."
Alisha Gray, a 17-year-old junior at Centennial High School in Ellicott City, said she would not be at school Monday.
"I'm trying to live to see 18," she said. "I'm not coming. I already told my parents that. Everybody's like, 'It's not going to happen here.' It could happen anywhere."
Sun staff writers fers Mike Bowler, Candus Thomson, Laura Sullivan, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Jill Hudson Neal, Erika D. Peterman, Dail Willis, Mike Farabaugh and Lisa Respers contributed to this article.
Pub Date: 5/07/99