Local officials discuss consequences of school threats

EDINBURG, Texas ( ValleyCentral ) — Local officials continued to stress the serious consequences of making school threats at a press conference held in Edinburg on Monday.

Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District was the target of an online threat, which led to an FBI arrest of a Kansas City teenager on Saturday.

Hidalgo County District Attorney Toribio “Terry” Palacios said all threats, no matter their credibility, will be taken seriously.

“Whether you do it on Facebook or you report something, every threat to our community is going to be taken serious and prosecution is going to be taken serious as the threat’s going to get,” Palacios said.

He added that cases involving school threats could carry a punishment of up to 10 years in jail.

Edinburg CISD Superintendent Mario Salinas was also in attendance at the press conference. He said the most recent threat made against a neighboring school district affected Edinburg CISD’s attendance.

“Last Monday we had 88% attendance,” Salinas said. “We probably lost maybe a million dollars in state funds just from that alone.”

School districts receive state funding dependent on their attendance records. Salinas said threats made against a school cause parents to keep their kids home and attendance records to drop.

Another main topic of the press conference included the discussion of resources used to investigate the threats.

“It costs too much chaos, too much disruption from our parents to our schools, and our federal officials,” Palacios said. “All that has some resources that we have to spend on, and if we spend an amount of resources, we are going to tax it to you.”

Parents are now being put at the forefront of the conversation and are being urged to oversee their children’s social media habits.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KVEO-TV.