Families, police respond to latest threat of violence at Petaluma High School

At least six police officers were at Petaluma High School Wednesday, and additional staff were brought in by the district, all in response to the recently reported threat of violence at a Sonoma County school campus.

According to Petaluma City Schools assistant superintendent Maité Iturri, high school attendance dropped “noticeably” on Wednesday.

“We can confidently say that many of the absences are due to the current threat,” Iturri added.

It came in a series of messages posted to a shared Google doc in class on Tuesday, Lt. Garrett Glaviano of the Petaluma Police Department.

One message was a threat of sexual assault against a student, according to police. Another, copied and pasted multiple times into the joint document, threatened to use an assault rifle on campus on Wednesday.

The shared document was being livestreamed on a class monitor and student laptops at the time, and while it was being viewed, anonymous users began editing the document and adding inappropriate comments, Glaviano said.

It was in a freshman Spanish class, according to students who spoke to the Petaluma Argus-Courier on condition of anonymity.

The Argus Courier reviewed student photos of the threatening messages, which student photos said included pornography, racial slurs and a list of student names containing the words “hit list.”

The threat of sexual violence was directed at a student, as the photos showed.

The Google doc was accessible to anyone who had its link and required no names or credentials, police said.

Police said they couldn’t determine how credible the threats were but said they were taking them seriously “out of caution”.

“The comments made during the live stream were random and it appeared that the writers were trying to surpass the previous one in terms of shock value,” police wrote in a Nixle alert Tuesday night.

Most of the comments did not appear to be linked to the two threats, Glaviano said.

“We continue to investigate the legitimacy of the threats made and to date have found no evidence to support their validity,” Superintendent Matthew Harris said in a statement Wednesday, which was emailed to parents.

Still, Wednesday was another difficult day for administrators, teachers, parents and students as they grapple with an ongoing epidemic of threats, violence and other corrosive behavior in local schools.

School officials notified police about the shared document around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, followed by a second notification later in the evening. The Petaluma Police Department issued a public notice on Nixle about the threat at 8:54 p.m. Tuesday.

Overnight through Wednesday morning, families at Petaluma High School said they have been dealing with the news and how to respond.

Many apparently opted to skip school for the day.

For parent Michael Day Williams, the decision was particularly difficult: his ninth-grade son was in the class that received the threatening messages, and his son’s name was added to the “hit list,” he said.

Skipping school might have been an easier decision other than his son playing for the Trojans baseball team — and if he and other players didn’t go to school that day, they couldn’t attend the scheduled afternoon game.

One by one, Williams said, the boys on the baseball team decided to attend school so they could play Cardinal Newman at their home game.

“They all said bravely and in quick succession, ‘We’re going to school,'” Williams recalled, describing it as “a pretty dramatic moment at 7:30 a.m.”

Iturri, the assistant superintendent, described Wednesday’s additional staff presence, which included on-site mental health providers.

The answer came as the county continues to grapple with a series of incidents on campus, including the fatal stabbing of a 16-year-old Montgomery High student on March 1.

Williams, who has a background as a mental health counselor, echoed an observation made by numerous school administrators recently that touched on mental health: Young people are in pain, he said.

“This mindset oozes out,” he said, “that it’s okay to hate other people, it’s okay to joke about violence, it’s okay to be misogynistic.”

Children, especially boys, today are “surrounded by this ideology,” he said.

“It’s a societal problem. It goes beyond our city. And I’m sitting here and watching our city kind of fray at the edges.”

Referring to certain incidents like Tuesday’s, Iturri said: “We are in uncharted waters in many ways, at least here in Petaluma, and our response is to work closely with our partners in mental health, law enforcement, parents/carers, students and staff to work together.

“The current environment nationally with school safety is a big issue that we are striving to get right and we believe communication is a big part of the solution,” she said.

Williams agreed on the need for communication — including honest dialogue, even if it’s painful.

“Let’s talk about what’s really happening here and what’s happening to our kids right before our eyes. That’s not normal.”

Madison Smalstig, editor of the Press Democrats, contributed to this story. Don Frances is editor of the Petaluma Argus-Courier. You can reach him at [email protected].