All Cedar Rapids public schools were closed on Monday as a response to threats posted on social media. The Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) informed parents and staff of the closure in an email sent shortly before 9:30 p.m. on Sunday night.
“This closure is for the safety of all students and staff,” CRCSD said in a statement posted on its site.
“CRCSD is aware of the social media threat made by an unidentified person,” according to the statement. “We have been working with the Cedar Rapids Police Department and their resources with the state public safety agencies and FBI to investigate the situation over the last twenty-four hours.”
The decision to cancel school was made after consulting the Cedar Rapids Police Department (CRPD), according to a statement the department posted to Facebook on Sunday night.
CRPD said “social media posts made over the weekend by an unidentified person or persons affecting CRCSD property” prompted the school cancellation on Monday “out of an abundance of caution.” The department said it was working with Iowa public safety agencies and the FBI in its investigation of the threats.
“This has become a complex investigation and all leads are being examined closely,” CRPD said in its Sunday night statement. “At the time of this release, no suspects have been identified and no arrests have been made. CRCSD continues to communicate with CRPD and other agencies involved in this response and will work to inform families as quickly as possible as information affecting them becomes available.”
Neither the school district nor the police have provided any further information. CRSCD said it planned to provide more information on Monday afternoon, but as of 3 p.m. there had been no updates.
The number of social media threats against schools has dramatically increased over the past few years, according to the FBI.
“We have to take all of them seriously,” Kelly Smith, the assistant special agent in charge for the criminal branch of the Seattle division of the FBI, said in a TV news interview about school threats last month. “We can’t miss a single one, so every threat that we receive gets investigated.”
Smith told King-5 News that the number of threats posted online is putting a strain on the FBI’s resources
“We get asked, ‘what’s the cost of this?’” he said. “Well, it’s impossible to measure because we are pulling resources away from cases that, otherwise, we would be investigating.”
In August, the Iowa City Public Library was evacuated after a bomb threat was made online. After a thorough search of the building by law enforcement officers, the threat was determined to be a hoax. The library reopened the next day, despite what the Iowa City public safety information officer said were “multiple additional threats online.”
No one has been charged in the case of the library threat, and the Iowa City Police Department has released no further information about its investigation.
On Monday afternoon, CRCSD announced that classes would resume on Tuesday, but programs held before school hours were canceled.
This story originally appeared in LV Daily, Little Village’s Monday-Friday email newsletter. Sign up to have it delivered for free to your inbox.
