Principal Jim Fish would rather be at home in bed sleeping the late night hours away. Instead, tonight he is patrolling the halls of his sprawling Montgomery County high school like a weary soldier. Some twisted soul in cyberspace is giving him no other choice.

The 84 doors that lead into the school he pulls and jostles to make sure they are locked; the padlocks on the 1,400-plus lockers, he tugs again to make sure they have been fastened; endless darkened hallways are broken only by the white beam of his hand-held flashlight.

His ears catch each sound and examine it. His eyes look upon objects he has seen a thousand times before and searches for a hint of something that could be different. Just about every hour on the hour, the ritual is repeated.

That twisted soul somewhere out there is threatening to blow up his Sherwood High. The very idea ticks him off. And Jim Fish is damned if he is going to let this coward, a faceless, voiceless coward hiding in some far-flung corner of cyberspace scare him.

So here he is, in the wee hours of the night rattling lockers. The slap of steel padlock striking metal locker clangs its way down the maze of empty hallways.

He's making enough racket to wake the dead. His aim is not to be quiet anyway. He wants the sleeping parents of his 1,700 students to hear that he is here, giving up a Mother's Day celebration with his family to prove his point: This school is safe and parents have no excuse not to send their children off for a full day of learning.

Fish has his work cut out for him. Parents and students have been anxious about Monday, May 10, for weeks. Across Maryland and other states, a vague Internet rumor that something violent, like a school blowing up, is to happen on May 10, and people, if they know what's good for them, should stay out of the schools.

Here at Sherwood, the past two weeks have been tense. Dozens and dozens of students and parents have said they are worried. Antsy students have been streaming in and out of the principal's office talking about what more they have read or heard passed down from another student about the happenings of May 10. Calls have flooded the switchboard as concerned parents look for solace and a reason to insist their child attend school.

Last week, nearly 400 people showed up at a school meeting to talk about the authorless threats. Two weeks ago two bomb threats were called in and Fish evacuated the school for 40 minutes. Last Sunday a police dog sniffed every corner of the building after a parent called the police because her child had heard a bomb had been planted.

"Other counties haven't had the same hype and sensationalism that we have had here," says Fish. "That's what is leading us to act differently. That's why I am here tonight."

Shift work

Tonight, Fish has assembled a rag-tag team of six to walk the halls and keep an eye out. He, his two assistant principals, his chief of security and two parents are taking shifts walking the suburban campus. Every now and again a police officer in his cruiser drives around the building.

All together the six have nearly 100 years of teaching under their belts and just about as much in parenting.

"I don't deal in fear," says Lloyd Williams, a retired D.C. city government worker who has two daughters, one a freshman and one a senior, at Sherwood High. "We can't let a few demented people with nothing else to do keep children from getting an education. It's too important."

He shines a flashlight through the dark fields behind the school and peers through a bush. He shakes his head.

The idea that someone is trying to disrupt education has struck a chord with Williams, a Harlem-born New Yorker who spent the 1960s and '70s fighting in the civil rights movement. He says he has been arrested for standing up for equality, for fighting the establishment, for working to integrate schools.

Satisfied the school premises are safe, he strolls over to the back of his station wagon and pulls out a book, "Freedom and Justice" by southern civil rights photographer Cecil Williams (no relation).

There he is, younger, slimmer and nattily dressed, trying to integrate an all-white lunch counter in South Carolina.

His finger traces the outline of the photograph. "People have to come to school, even in the worst conditions. If anyone has learned about being fearful, it's the African-Americans in this country. We overcame this."

He closes the book and looks toward the shadowed exteriors of Sherwood High. "We can overcome this stuff, too. What parents need to say to children is 'I'll go to school with you. I'll take this weight. Let's walk together.' "

Williams puts the book back under a blanket and heads toward the school's front doors. He's here, he says, because he is taking some of the weight, the worry, that his two daughters may be carrying and making their trip into school an easier one.

Feeding the fear

Inside, Fish and his two of his assistant principals, Leo McDonald and Robert Cooley, are holding court with the late-night television reporters eager to get a comment for the 11 o'clock newscast. Fish obliges. Williams decides to take another stroll through the halls to check again for loose locker doors.

McDonald is running over the reasons out loud why the six of them feel it is necessary to hunker down in the school for the night. The tragedy at Columbine High, where 12 students and one teacher were killed by two gun-wielding students, and the ensuing media coverage is fuel for this kind of fear, he says.

"Everything is so publicized," he says. "Now you can see the same shooting on TV 50 times. That scares people."

On some level, he realizes staying up all night inside the school is futile.

"You can't stop someone from picking up the phone and calling in a bomb threat," McDonald says.

Fish is trying to at least make it tougher. A caller ID box was installed just last week. Faculty has been retrained to deal with these calls.

The idea to stay through the night came to him last week. Being on the front lines could offer the parents some assurance that school is safe. And if that doesn't work, he isn't above shaming them into sending their children to school. For Fish, it's whatever it takes.

"This is not a slumber party," says Fish.

He doesn't plan to get any sleep tonight, even though he was up until 5: 30 the morning before. The school had its prom Saturday night in Westminster and he was there from beginning to end.

This night, in between making the rounds, he is going to slip in some paperwork. McDonald and Cooley fiddle with next year's schedule.

No one here is looking to be a hero.

"If the kids see fear from their parents, then that's what we will get, fear," says Fish. "I can understand why parents and teachers are going to be concerned. But at what point do we stop living?"

Facing fear

Make no mistake, Fish doesn't think a bomb has been planted in his school tonight. And, God forbid, even if he were to find one, what would he do? Diffuse it like James Bond? Jump on it like some selfless commando and let it explode on him? Not on your life.

"I would certainly not be in this building if I had any inclination that something was going to happen tonight," says the 49-year-old principal.

And that is just the point. There is nothing to fear, he says, the threats are unspecific and unsubstantiated at best.

When Fish says he isn't grandstanding or looking for some good public relations, you want to believe him. He comes off as the fatherly type who very much wants to listen to the concerns of his students.

"These 1,700 boys and girls are my children," he says, looking far too perky for a man who has had only a handful of sleep in the past two days. "If something threatens them, a parent will react to protect his children."

During his nearly 30 years as an educator, Fish says there hasn't been much new under the sun. Bomb threats have always been there. One group of people has tried to stop another from going to school.

"I was born in Ideal, Ga. I can recall how life was down there. You were denied because of the color of your skin. I remember having to walk to school as white kids rode by us and laughed at us, and spat on us. Those things stayed with me.

"The way I showed people that I was just as good was through academics," he says. He wants to make sure children today have that same opportunity.

No shows

Once the morning light begins to stream through the hallways, the moment of truth comes. Will the students show up or will they stay home? The six are hopeful.

But fear has taken a solid grip. Only about 50 percent of the students show up.

Fish and his staff, though disappointed, are looking at the positives. Nothing happened. There wasn't even a prankster pulling the fire alarm, as some students and teachers feared.

Only parent Karim Abdalla, who patrolled the campus most of Sunday night, wore his disappointment for all to see.

"I'm depressed," he says at the end of the school day. "If we fear today, then we will fear again and again."

Pub Date: 5/11/99