Parents, students left on edge by reported threats to Knox County Schools

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — Multiple arrests were made Wednesday in Knox County after a rash of reported school threats. Some of those arrests coming from Fulton High School, the Richard Yoakley School and Northwest Middle School. Between the three schools, four arrests were made.

It’s becoming all to common for parents to have discussions about school threats with their children. Maribeth Heitbrink has a son who goes to Northwest Middle. She said this is not the first time a threat has been made toward the school.

“Every day it’s something that goes in the back of my head just sending them to school and knowing the risks with that. I want to know that they are safe when they go to school,” Heitbrink said. “Obviously, the threats are coming out and this is now the first threat that’s come out to our school. We had, almost a year ago, threats that came out and nothing was ever resolved so it’s something that sat with me. With more coming out, obviously they are doing a better job of trying to solve them, but it still feels like why is still happening.”

She added she has already had multiple conversations with her son about school threats and what to do if something happens.

“What makes me sad is, he’s almost become numb to it because it’s so normalized at this point,” Heitbrink said. “He was shocked that it was happening in his school but in the sense of ‘oh yeah we talked about it, they said there was threats.’ I think that if this is becoming normalized and our kids are becoming desensitized to it, that’s a huge issue. That just shows the lack of prevention we’ve done for these things to occur.”

6 News also spoke with the McNabb Center’s Senior Director of Children and Youth Mental Health Programing about how parents should approach this subject matter with their kids.

“We have to open the dialogue and not be afraid to have those conversations. It’s a reality in our culture, in our schools to say we do drills for fires and other and we do drills for other acts of violence,” Lindsay Stone said. “Let their kids ask questions whatever age they are. Answer that in an age appropriate way not to increase their anxiety but to make sure that they feel safe in their response if something were to happen.”

Heitbrink said she does not want to be at a point where she has to pull her son from school out of fear.

“At this point, everything needs to be treated as credible,” she said. “I don’t want my kid going to school and being scared and I certainly don’t want to have to pull him out of something he enjoys because I’m scared to send him to a place that should be safe.”

According to the McNabb Center, the first thing parents need to do when talking to their kids is normalize the feeling of wanting to feel safe and secure when going into a school building. Knowing your schools protocols and different lockdown types before talking to their kids may help lessen the anxiety when those drills or threats happen.

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