Dear Parents and Guardians,

Today, Code Red sent a message to those who signed up for it saying, “Active Shooter, avoid the area or shelter in place.” Our Director of Safety received the message and called Code Red directly. The staff at Code Red were trying to determine where the message originated but said in a follow-up message, “Disregard previous notification for shelter in place.” As you can imagine, rumors began to circulate and FHS and FMS went into a secure mode until clarification could be attained. The Florence Police Department responded and worked with the campus administrations to determine if there was a threat to our campuses. It was determined that there was no threat and class resumed as normal. During this time, a student at FMS reported that a student at FHS had posted a picture over the weekend of him holding a weapon. That student was immediately isolated, and the post is being investigated. The student did not make a threat against any of our campuses, our staff, or any of our students in his post. I want to commend our campus staff for following our safety protocols and our students for cooperating. To sum up, there was no threat to any of our campuses today and the message from Code Red was inaccurate. FISD takes the safety and security of our campuses as our highest priority, and we will continue to be vigilant in addressing these situations. Thank you for your trust in FISD.

Sincerely,

Rick Kirkpatrick

Superintendent

Florence ISD