Following Bayshore Arrest, Manatee School District Clarifies Message Alerts

BRADENTON — Following the Thursday arrest of a Bayshore High School student who posted threats toward Manatee County students online, the Manatee School District posted multiple alerts to parents and employees on Friday, after a Charlotte County tip was mistakenly thought to regard a Manatee High School. The district released the following statement to clarify the events:

This message is to provide additional information about events from Thursday, September 12, and Friday, September 13, that led to multiple FortifyFL tips.

Early Thursday, reports of school threats on social media were circulating widely across Southwest Florida. Working with law enforcement, an investigation determined the tips were associated with schools in Charlotte County. Only initials for schools were used in the threats. For example, one of the schools was “PCHS,” which actually referred to Port Charlotte High. However, some in Manatee County took the initials to mean Parrish Community High School. The administration at Parrish Community communicated to families regarding this misinformation.

As the number of FortifyFL tips continued to rise in the afternoon and evening, we sent a message to all parents and employees that there was no credible evidence of a threat involving any Manatee District school. That message went out by email at 9:21 p.m. Due to an error in the messaging system, the message was inadvertently resent to families at approximately 6 a.m. Friday.

At approximately 11:00 p.m. Thursday, a student from Bayshore High School was arrested by the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office for posting a threat that specifically named King, Lee, and Sugg Middle Schools. The student said the threats were a joke. Law enforcement searched his home and did not find any means for this person to carry out such a threat. The district received notification of the arrest overnight.

Out of an abundance of caution and to reassure students, families, and staff, our two priorities this morning were to deploy additional security and safety resources to our schools and send messages to the Bayshore HS, King MS, Lee MS, and Sugg MS school communities.

Throughout the day today, as we do every day, our school administrators and security personnel continued to review every tip submitted through FortifyFL or any other means. The safety of your student has been, and always will be, our top priority. These events, along with widespread speculation on social media, have generated a significant amount of misinformation online.

As we go into the weekend, this is the perfect opportunity to speak with your child about the life-altering consequences of making threats or disrupting schools using social media. We will not tolerate interruptions to the education of our students. School safety is never a joke.

We look forward to welcoming students back to our schools on Monday.