Below are excerpts from the February 14, 2020 article ‘I don’t know if I want to go to school tomorrow’: Week of threats, lockdowns ‘traumatizing’ for students’ printed in Bethesda Magazine.

Huddled in a storage closet at Thomas Edison High School on Thursday, students were quiet.

After a few minutes, a school administrator announced over the intercom, “Stay in lockdown mode — turn off lights and lock the doors.” It was not a drill.

Outside, police had arrested a man who walked into the front office at Wheaton High School, said he had a gun and walked next door to Edison. He was apprehended by police outside of building, but the school was placed on lockdown for nearly an hour, prompting fear and anxiety inside.

Robert Grant, a junior at Walter Johnson High School who is part of Edison’s Foundations of Automotive Technologies program, said he and his classmates were directed into a small back room and told “to just stay there.”

“When I found out what was happening, I was a little terrified,” Grant wrote in a message to Bethesda Beat on Thursday night. “… From this I learned that your life can be turned upside down in an instant, so don’t take life for granted.”

Edison’s threat was one of at least four threats against Montgomery County high schools reported this week. On Sunday, a Montgomery Blair student made a social media post saying if they continued to be bullied, they would “end your f–ing lives.” Approximately 700 students were absent from school the next day as the police continued to investigate.

On Monday, five Clarksburg High School students were arrested. One brought a handgun to school and was robbed in a bathroom by the others, police said. A loaded magazine was found in one teen’s backpack.

There was no lockdown or imminent threat on Monday at Clarksburg High, but senior Zoe Tishaev said the situation was “unnerving.”

“It’s frightening to know a kid can carry a gun into school and nobody would know, and that’s why it’s so important that kids feel comfortable talking to security,” Tishaev said. “Clarksburg is safe and security does a phenomenal job. Sometimes kids make the wrong decisions.”

On Thursday afternoon, around dismissal time and after the incident at Edison, someone phoned in a threat to John F. Kennedy High School, prompting a 30-minute lockdown.

Nate Tinbite, a senior at Kennedy and the student member of the Montgomery County school board, wasn’t supposed to be at school on Thursday, but he returned in the afternoon to meet with the principal, Joe Rubens.

Mid-conversation, the threat came in and Rubens sprung to action, Tinbite said, making phone calls and directing Tinbite to hide in a conference room, where he turned out the lights and locked the door. School officials “did everything they were supposed to do and did it quickly,” Tinbite said. Police were at the school within minutes.

Approximately 10 patrol cars arrived and officers jumped out, jogging inside wearing tactical gear — bulletproof vests, helmets — and carrying assault weapons, Tinbite said.

The school fell silent, but many began posting on social media. “Why are we on lockdown???,” one Twitter post said. Another: “this is crazy…”

Many said they were scared, even after the lockdown was lifted.

“What’s really going to scar and traumatize students is that visual of the heavily armed officers, and having to hide under desks or in corners,” Tinbite said. “This is being normalized and it shouldn’t be.”

Andrea Anaya, a senior, was not at school at the time. Text messages from her friends began flowing in, saying there was a lockdown that wasn’t a drill. Anaya said she felt helpless; her friends were scared and there was nothing she could do, no information she could share.

Anaya and her friends mused about how they “never expected it to happen at our school.”

“I don’t know if I really want to go to school tomorrow,” Anaya wrote in a message to Bethesda Beat Thursday night. “It feels unsafe, it feels like anything can happen.”