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Copycat Threats and Jittery Nerves Force School Shutdowns Across the U.S.

Police officers checked Nutley High School in Nutley, N.J., on Friday, which shut down because of a student video some interpreted as a threat.Credit...George Etheredge for The New York Times

From New Jersey to Kansas to Texas, the aftermath of the Florida high school shooting has turned the routine of going to class into a nerve-racking proposition, as schools have ordered new lockdown drills, beefed up security and in some cases closed down entirely.

Since the killing of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday, teachers and administrators have been working to avoid a repeat in their own schools, while in many cases having to react to copycat threats or jittery nerves misinterpreting innocent sounds as approaching gunfire.

There were metal detectors and bag checks at B.M.C. Durfee High School, in Fall River, Mass., on Friday morning, after an anonymous Snapchat post warned the school could turn into “Florida part 2.”

In Nutley, N.J., the superintendent, Julie Glazer, shut down schools for all 4,100 students in the district after a parent reported seeing a video that included images of a student firing a gun and a school building. (The police said that there was no “imminent threat” and that the student was cooperating with them.)

“As both the superintendent of the Nutley Public Schools and as a parent, and because of the nature of the world in which we live, there was no other decision to be made,” the superintendent said in a statement.

Law enforcement officers have been busy rushing to schools. A Broward County deputy accidentally shot himself in the leg on Thursday while answering a mistaken report of a shooting in a school not far from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.

A community college south of Seattle that serves 17,000 students locked down its 80-acre campus on Friday morning as the police investigated reports of shots fired. No evidence of a shooting was found.

Some of the incidents have led to arrests on charges that include making threats or false reports.

Among those arrested: A 16-year-old student who, the local authorities said, got off a school bus in Macon County, N.C., threatened to return the next day and kill people, then mimed raking the area with gunfire; an 11-year-old girl in Davie, Fla., who was accused of leaving a note under an assistant principal’s door threatening to bring a gun to her middle school and kill people; and two high school students at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School who were accused of threatening on Snapchat to “gun down” their school, according to Sgt. Brendan Ryan of the New York Police Department.

Threat or no, many schools ordered teachers to immediately practice lockdown drills. A teacher in Denver, Carlee Easton, said she moved items from a closet in her classroom “to make more space for 9-year-olds to hide.” A teacher in the Bronx, N.Y., Kaela Brundage, said she and her students practiced cramming into a bathroom, staying silent inside for five minutes. “A few students cried even though they knew it was just practice,” she wrote on Twitter.

Mindful of the Florida shooting, administrators supplied Jennings Senior High School in Jennings, Mo., with portable metal detectors and wands to search for weapons at the championship basketball game being held Friday night, said Rhonda Key, the principal. Dr. Key said this would not be permanent. “We’re just doing this because it’s so fresh,” she said.

“You don’t want to scare them,” Dr. Key said. “But when you talk about these things, you must also say there is a real world out there.”

Some districts sent messages on Friday that parents found disconcerting. “We assure you that all rumors are being thoroughly investigated,” read one from the administration of the Haldane Central School District in Putnam County, N.Y. “At this moment, there is no credible threat to the district.”

“Needless to say, I am freaking out,” wrote one parent on Facebook.

At Da Vinci Arts Middle School in Portland, Ore., a drama teacher, Nicole Accuardi, took a different tack after listening to the fear and sadness expressed by many of her students.

During the day on Thursday, her 150 or so drama students cut out paper hearts and stuffed them in their pockets. At a routine end-of-day assembly, on Ms. Accuardi’s cue, they stood up, threw the hearts in the air and sang “You Are My Sunshine” to the surprise of the other teachers and students. Many joined in.

Many schools and districts have developed protocols for handling school shootings since 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

But those protocols would probably be revised, education officials said, with lessons learned from the latest shooting.

“There has to be an autopsy to really understand what went wrong and what went well,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Friday. “I was really concerned the first day that there was too much self-congratulation by the pundits on TV. The first responders did an unbelievable job. The teachers did an unbelievable job. But kids were killed, people were killed.”

For instance, she said, it appeared that despite a well-honed intruder plan, the suspect in the Parkland shooting, an expelled former student named Nikolas Cruz, may have been able to take advantage of his knowledge of dismissal procedures to slip into the school at the end of the day, according to the authorities.

But Ms. Weingarten also cautioned about overreacting. Not every threat was equally serious, she said: “We have no idea these days what’s a Russian bot and what’s a copycat.”

Some schools took pains to try to keep nerves calm. At Dysart High School in El Mirage, Ariz., the principal took extra steps to make sure students knew the previously scheduled drill on Thursday was, in fact, just a drill. The reminder was included in the morning announcements, and was reiterated on the public address system several times throughout the day, said Zachery Fountain, a district spokesman.

Eureka High School in California postponed its drill that had been scheduled for Thursday, partly because officials were concerned about the mental state of students, said Fred Van Vleck, the district superintendent.

“We determined it was best to allow the teachers the time in the classroom to have the conversations with students, rather than running them through drills at this point,” he said.

But across the country, other officials were on edge as rumors and hoaxes flew at broadband speed. In the East Texas school district of Redwater, the superintendent, Kelly Burns, said the schools would be closed Friday, “to address a rumor about a possible shooter.”

In Topsham, Me., an elementary school was evacuated on Friday morning in response to a threat, following frenzied speculation about a different threat to the high school.

“These are unsettling times. I too am a parent, and understand the fear and anxiety that school incidents generate,” Brad Smith, the superintendent, said in a statement on Friday. “We are pleased that neither situation proved to be as significant as initially reported.”

In Kansas, the Atchison County sheriff’s office and the local school district declared a lockdown Friday while investigating a threat. The lockdown was quickly lifted, and the sheriff’s office said on Facebook, “We apologize for the panic this may have caused.”

Reporting was contributed by Claudio Cabrera, Elizabeth A. Harris, Kirk Johnson, Mitch Smith Nikita Stewart and Daniel Victor.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Across a Jittery U.S., Schools Shut Down To Prevent a ‘Part 2’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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