Dr. Marie Feagins (Photo by Memphis-Shelby County Schools)¶
Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Dr. Marie Feagins addressed families’ concerns about school safety and communications in a Facebook live post on Thursday, after several threats against schools on social media led to a district-wide lockdown on Wednesday. ¶
Feagins said in the video that several arrests were made this week in connection to the threats against the district, which first began with threats against Southwind High School via phone and social media Wednesday morning. Feagins added that she and other district leaders have been in “direct contact” with local law enforcement, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security amid the ongoing investigation.¶
“I just wanted to share that across the district, we've made about five arrests to ensure that individuals who continue with the threats that are being made [against] our schools understand that we are taking them all seriously,” she said.¶
In another press conference Thursday evening, Feagins and local law enforcement said that a Nashville teenager has been arrested and charged in connection to the threats against Southwind. According to district leaders, Homeland Security and the FBI helped the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office identify and find the 15-year-old, who was taken into custody within about 36 hours of Wednesday's threats.¶
However, Feagins noted that many families have expressed concerns with district leaders about communications issues during Wednesday’s lockdown, which left some parents in the dark about the threats and investigation updates. Feagins said she noticed that “several thousand” families said they did not receive important emergency messages from the district.¶
“I've looked at those numbers, looked at the number of text messages that have not gone through, and more than 60,000 of those messages had not reached our families,” she said.¶
Feagins said those communication issues were likely due to problems with their communication platform Finalsite, formerly known as Blackboard.¶
“We're in the next step of figuring out what the next solution is and what we need to do,” Feagins said. “So, if we need to change our platform, we'll definitely change our platform.”¶
A spokesperson from Finalsite told ABC24 that the lack of communication was not a result of the platform’s mass notification system, but rather due to missing or outdated information provided by the district to the platform. The company said they are willing to work with the district to update the information to fix communication issues moving forward.¶
The lockdown at MSCS was among several similar incidents involving threats across the state against schools in recent weeks. Freedom Prep Charter Schools in Memphis posted on social media that it closed schools on Thursday “out of an abundance of caution due to recent threats made toward our schools.”¶
Rutherford County Schools also announced this week that students have been arrested for spreading false threats. In addition, Williamson County Schools sent parents an email last week to debunk claims of a “school threat” list.¶
