Teacher Held in Threats to Colleagues : Schools: Suspect is arrested for second time. He was released earlier after allegedly having a loaded handgun on South Gate campus.

A South Gate kindergarten teacher who police say took a loaded handgun on campus last week was being held Monday in lieu of $1-million bail for making threats against school employees, authorities said.

Raymond Jett Jr., who was being held in Los Angeles County Jail, was first arrested Thursday when school district police were notified that he had a handgun in his car, parked on the grounds of Montara Street Elementary School. Jett posted $20,000 bail on firearm possession charges and was released Thursday afternoon, officials said.

He was rearrested Friday morning at a Los Angeles Unified School District office after police were told he had made threats to teachers and to the principal at Montara after his release.

“He’s holding some people responsible for telling on him and he had threatened to do bodily harm,” said Wes Mitchell, the district’s police chief. “It’s unusual--there’s no question about that.”

Jett’s bail was raised from $150,000 to $1 million Friday after South Gate police argued to a Municipal Court commissioner that Jett, 36, posed a danger. A search Friday of the Torrance home where he lives with his parents turned up 18 weapons, police said.

“We felt that he was still a danger because of the threats,” said Sgt. Martin VanLierop, of the South Gate Police Department. “We felt it was more beneficial to have him in custody than possibly posing a threat.”

Montara Principal Juliana Dawson declined to discuss the case other than to say that she did not believe she needed to tell parents about the arrests. The school district did not announce the arrests and they did not become public until Monday.

“The safety of the children is my first concern,” Dawson said. “There’s no reason now to notify anyone.”

School district and South Gate police say they do not know why Jett took the weapon to school Thursday. Dawson called school police Thursday after learning that the teacher had the weapon in his car, police said.

Jett agreed to the search that found the loaded handgun under the passenger seat in his car in the school lot.

Under a recent law, possession of a firearm on a school campus can be a felony. Jett, who is scheduled to be arraigned today in South Gate Municipal Court, probably will be charged with felony gun possession and making terrorist threats, also a possible felony. He faces a maximum of three years in prison if convicted of the gun possession charge and four years if found guilty of making the threats.

After his arrest Thursday, Jett was told to show up for a meeting Friday morning at the district’s administrative office in Gardena. When he arrived, school police were there.

Jett, who had been teaching the kindergarten class since July, has worked for the school district since 1986. He was a substitute from 1986 to 1993, when he became an intern teacher through a program at Cal State Dominguez Hills. He became a regular teacher last month at Montara, a year-round school with about 1,200 students.

Yvonne Chavez, director of the district’s Region A office in Gardena, said she was told about the threats Friday morning about the time that Jett showed up. She agreed there was no cause to alert parents about the arrests.

“In my judgment, to tell parents that a teacher had a loaded gun would serve no purpose other than to scare them to death,” Chavez said.

But Montara parent Mina Montejano, the school’s Parent-Teacher Student Assn. president, said the parents should be told whenever an arrest is made--particularly of a teacher.

“I think we should know we are sending our kids to a safe place,” Montejano said.