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Parents upset about lack of communication on alleged threat

Posted at 9:42 PM, May 17, 2019
and last updated 2019-05-17 22:02:45-04

IONIA, Mich. — Parents are speaking out about the way Ionia Public Schools handled an alleged threat to the high school on Friday.

It’s still unclear what the threat was or when it was first made, but police say it wasn’t credible and the student wasn’t in school.

Parents say they were never officially notified and had to look at social media to learn a threat existed to start with.

The school eventually posted a message to Facebook saying, “The alleged threat of violence at Ionia High School has been investigated and law enforcement determined it is not a viable threat.”

Dennis Kramer, who has two sons in Ionia High School, said he didn’t feel comfortable sending his kids to class on Friday.

“The school hasn’t notified us on anything. If we have a soccer game that gets canceled because of rain, we get emailed about it, and I don’t even have any kids in soccer,” Kramer said. “But yet, something like this, they say it`s too difficult to contact anybody. And that`s why they say they didn`t contact anybody.”

He says he would have liked to receive any form of communication about the threat whether it was credible or not.

“At least a warning, which was taken care of, let us know that there is a threat,” Kramer said. “And that everything has been cleared and is not viable. Just keep us in the loop of what is going on, so we know that are kids are safe.”

Ionia police said the student who made the threat wasn’t at school on Friday because they were being questioned at the police department.

FOX 17 attempted to reach Superintendent Ron Wilson and the school district but didn’t receive a response.