School safety drills are nothing new for Austin High senior Serena Ray. The 17-year-old has been doing these types of drills since kindergarten. But on Sept. 25, when her campus was put on a “hold” — which requires students and staff to stay in their classrooms — it wasn’t a drill.
“Typically, whenever they make those announcements you’re expecting to hear ‘drill’ right after that, and we didn’t hear that,” she said. “When you hear anything that doesn’t have the word ‘drill’ after it, there’s immediately confusion that arises amongst the room.”
Ray was in her first period English class when the hold announcement went out. She said her teacher told everyone to remain calm. Within minutes, she said, the campus was placed on lockdown.
“I had previously never experienced a lockdown in real life,” she said. “It was a situation I always felt distance from and all of a sudden, I was in it.”
The teacher instructed Ray and her classmates to get under desks in the corner of the room. They huddled together underneath them. One of her friends started to tear up.
“I think a lot of us were just bracing, waiting to hear a sound or to hear something loud — a commotion. We just didn’t know what was going on,” she said.
Ray said while some students were expecting the worst, others weren’t as fazed.
“Some weren’t expecting anything at all because in a lot of ways I feel like students are really desensitized from the issue of gun violence because it’s so prevalent among us,” she said.
Without any information about what was going on, Ray said students began spreading unverified information on social media about why the school might be on lockdown.
“I heard rumors that there was an active shooter inside — which was not the case. I heard rumors about bomb threats,” she said.
It turned out the threat at Austin High was not credible, but it still disrupted the school day and caused real stress for students, staff and families.
School threats are on the rise nationwide
If it feels like Austin-area schools are facing more threats this year, it’s because they are. And Austin isn't alone. The increase is part of a nationwide trend.
According to the Austin Regional Intelligence Center, there have been more threats during the beginning of the current school year than there were during the start of the 2023-24 school year. Most of those threats have been made on social media.
The Travis County District Attorney’s Office, for its part, has also received an increasing number of school threat reports from districts throughout the county.
“Our office will continue to work with our law enforcement and school district partners impacted by these threats to ensure the safety of our school communities,” a spokesperson said in a statement to KUT.
Travis County District Attorney José Garza and nearly a dozen Central Texas school districts held a news conference last month to address the rise in threats and to urge families to help their children understand the impact of threatening violence, even if they’re joking.
Austin ISD, for example, has investigated more than 100 threats since Sept. 1, according to Wayne Sneed, the district's police chief. For comparison, the district received about 300 threats during the entire 2023-24 school year.
Students in Eanes ISD, Del Valle ISD, Hays CISD, Bastrop ISD and Lake Travis ISD have been arrested for making threats against schools.
According to a Lake Travis ISD spokesperson, the district has faced nine threats since Sept. 13. One of those threats was made by a student at Bee Cave Middle School. The student was arrested on Oct. 1 and charged with making a terroristic threat. A day later, the Lake Travis ISD Police Department arrested a 16-year-old in Harris County for threatening in a text to “shoot up” Lake Travis High School on Sept. 24.
Although law enforcement determined the threat against Lake Travis High wasn’t credible, it still significantly disrupted the school day — a challenge many campuses have dealt with.
Thinking about school threats is part of the norm for educators these days
Debbie Garinger is the principal at Lake Travis High. She’s been working in public education for more than four decades and said the prevalence of school threats has gotten much worse over the years.
“When I got into education I never thought that I’d be talking about these sorts of issues,” she said. “You think you’re there to be the instructional leader and to move your students forward academically and your school along — [I] never thought I’d be thinking about school threats.”
Garinger said panicked parents were calling the school to get their kids off campus and lining up at the school to pick them up after hearing about the threat.
“It went on all day long even when they were told it was not a credible threat," she said. "But that’s how parents react. That’s how kids react, and you can’t continue your instructional day when things like that are happening."
By the next school day, Garinger said things had returned to normal. She even talked with a student she saw at Starbucks in the morning who told Garinger she had been scared the day the threat was made but was feeling better. Garinger was relieved to hear that. But, she said, the stress of a potential school shooting does weigh on her every day.
“I tell our kids, ‘You’re here to learn, and my job is to provide you with a safe learning environment,’” she said. “But it does worry me. I think that any principal it would — because you hear about it and you just want your school to be safe.”
Garinger said she also understands that in the wake of threats parents may want more information than the school can share while an investigation is ongoing.
“We need parents to trust us that we’re going to share with you what we can share with you,” she said. “But when we’re investigating something please just trust us that we’re doing the right thing to protect your child and that’s our job.”
Parents are also sent into 'panic mode' over these threats
Alessandra Beavers knows firsthand how stressful it is to be a parent hearing about a school threat and not know what’s going on or if their child is safe. Her daughter is a student at Austin High.
When the campus was placed on lockdown last month, Beavers got a text from her daughter asking if she knew what was happening. She got a few more texts from her daughter.
“And then it was followed by just ‘I love you,’ was the text. So pretty much [I] went into panic mode,” she said. “No one knew anything, there was no information out and there was nothing we could do.”
She said receiving those texts from her daughter was brutal.
“It’s something that parents should not have to deal with and yet apparently this is how we live now,” she said.
During the lockdown, Beavers’ daughter and other students hid behind their teacher’s desk.
“She said they were really quiet and people were praying. She’s like ‘I don’t know what I believe in,’ but in that moment she was praying. It was rough,” she said.
Beavers’ daughter asked to get picked up early from school that day. When she went back to school the next day, there was another threat that also ended up not being credible. Beavers said, ultimately, she has to try to push fears out of her mind when she sends her kids to school.
“I have to ... will it away,” she said. “I can’t let it be on the front of my mind because, if it is, then the kids can never leave the house again.”
Beavers said her daughter seems to be handling the stress of school threats reasonably well.
“But, I think she and all of her friends, how can they not be traumatized? I mean, it’s there. They’re living with it,” she said.
Students do not want this to be common for future generations
Ray, for her part, said it was hard to focus on class after the lockdown at Austin High.
“It just felt like my head was somewhere else. I couldn’t continue to learn about English. I just needed to be in my own world for a second and process everything that just happened,” she said.
At this point, Ray said she thinks a lot of students have moved on, but that it will be challenging if the campus gets put on lockdown again.
“I think a lot of us are going to feel immediately anxious because that was a very scary situation for us," she said.
Ray said she doesn't want future generations to experience this, and it should not be the norm. She said gun violence prevention should be a bipartisan issue.
“It’s an experience that is unique to us and an experience we don’t want to have,” she said.
She founded Austin Youth Gun Violence Awareness in August 2023 to help young people advocate for policy change and make their voices heard even when they’re not old enough to vote.
“It’s so important that we share a voice on this issue because we do have such a unique perspective to bring,” she said. “I am hopeful that there can be positive change on this issue.”
