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Superintendent Arnold Bunch discussed the recent school shooting hoaxes at the Tuesday School Board Meeting.

“I am very proud of how everyone responded,” Bunch said. “The communication and dialogue we had with our law enforcement was amazing and we thank both the city and the county for working with us.

“We worked through the night Thursday to quickly solve what had occurred and made sure we got a note out to the families as quickly as possible to let them know that it was a hoax and it was safe to send their kids to school.”

Bunch explained how the district handled the hoaxes last week and how it worked to keep students safe.

“Some schools might have thought they would have seen a lot of law enforcement in the parking lots, but in talking with law enforcement, we had them intentionally nearby in case of an emergency but we didn’t show a huge force presence in the school parking lot,” Bunch said, “Working with Chief Roger Overholt and Sheriff Chad Mullins, we had officers on standby in case anything happened.”

Bunch explained how even though the threats were false, the district treats each threat like a real one no matter the case.

“I hope that we get out of this hoax deal, I sent a note to all the parents and guardians letting them know how serious we take this matter,” he said.

“We treat every threat like it’s real until we find out it’s not. We take these very seriously, we engage with law enforcement immediately and we have had great cooperation. We run it into the ground and we don’t stop until we find it is not a real threat.

“We communicate with parents and guardians as quickly as we can; sometimes that may not be as quick as the parents and guardians want but we want to make sure we are worried about the safety of our students and faculty first and foremost and then we’ll worry about getting the information out there next.”

Bunch explained the punishment if a student is found to be behind a hoax.

“The board policy that most of this falls under is terroristic threats and it is up to each principal to decide the punishments for students and all of the ones we have had this year have been the minimum of one year expulsion.”

The HCDOE policy dealing with these type activities falls under policy 6-3091, “Terroristic Threats.”

Following Bunch’s statement he gave a brief update on the Lincoln Elementary School project.

“We are working on the permit right now,” he said. “We want to get street plan approval on what we will have to do to Martin Luther King and we want to wait and see what that is going to look like before we host a groundbreaking ceremony.”

Bunch updated the community on the implementation of having Narcan, a drug used to treat narcotic overdose, at each school within the county.

“One of the items the board approved at the last meeting and I mentioned we would push heavily was having Narcan in the schools,” he said. “It was approved on Tuesday and then we had it in the schools by Friday.”

“We have five containers with two packages each in the high schools, two containers with two packages each at the remaining schools.”

The board discussed the proposed capital project that would put a fence around the front of Morristown Hamblen High School West and the playground at Russellville Primary School.

The fencing project which would cost $109,062 was met with several questions from the board.

“I looked at the bid for this project and it doesn’t have the linear feet listed and $109 thousand dollars is a lot of money, what is for and where are we putting it?” School Board Member Joe Gibson asked.

Hugh Clement, Assistant Superintendent for Administration, explained the proposed fence would be an approximately 6 feet tall black vinyl chain fence that would surround the entire campus.

Gibson inquired further as to why the school would be requesting the fence around the school.

“Six feet isn’t too high; people climb that length all the time,” Gibson said. “To me it would be a great eyesore, I just want to know the reasoning because East doesn’t have a fence around it.”

Clement explained it was requested by the administration for security reasons, and there is a lot of unnecessary foot traffic around the school.

Gibson reiterated that a 6 foot fence would n’t stop a lot of people from getting over it.

After further discussion the board decided to table the fence project at West High School to find a better solution.

The fence project for Russellville Primary was approved.