Blake's Day -

Blake had quite a day! He gets to school at 8:45 am. He was in Homeroom, which is Science class, when an announcement came over the PA system that all classes in the 7th grade pod needed to go into lockdown mode. That includes getting into a classroom, under a desk. Blake is in a temporary class, kind of like a big office cubicle. His class got up and walked into the nearest classroom and they got under the desks. The principle, Brenda Mayberry, got on the PA system about 30 mins later and told them that they needed to evacuate ASAP, but that they needed to do it in a very calm manner. The teachers moved them out to the baseball field. The kids didn't know what was going on. They have lockdown drills and thought this was a drill until they were asked to calmly but quickly move outside. There were SWAT guys, Pinal County Sheriffs, firefighters, ambulances, bomb sniffing dogs, and Mesa cops moving the kids along. The kids were asked to sit on the baseball field for 30mins, in the sun. The bomb dogs went thru the 7th grade pod while all grades (7th, 8th, and 9th) were moved into the gym, which is all the way across campus from the 7th graders pod. They spent the next 3 hours locked down in the gym! After the 3 hours, nothing was found anywhere in the school and the kids had to form a line and go thru a check point type thing to have their backpacks sniffed by the bomb dogs. After it was over, the kids were allowed to go back to their classes.
At about 1pm, I got a call from the school saying that there was a bomb threat directed at the 7th grade pod. They also said that Pinal County Sheriff Department fully checked out the area and found it safe. We were *not* to come pick up our students, that school would be released at the normal time of 3:48 pm.
It was so hard to wait to go and get Blake! When I got there to pick him up I asked him if he was scared, he said "No, we didn't even know what was going on for a long time." He was more upset about missing all his classes then anything!

Thank goodness that it turned out to be nothing! Thank goodness for bomb sniffing dogs! Thank goodness that Pinal County took the threat seriously and evacuated the kids and checked everything out! Im glad that it all turned out so well.