Fear Sends School Attendance Plunging

Attendance dropped significantly at schools across Ventura County on Friday, capping a tension-filled week of bomb scares, threats and rumors of impending campus violence.

School officials attributed drops in attendance in Newbury Park, Moorpark, Ventura and Port Hueneme to a widely repeated rumor that violence would occur at schools Friday, officials said.

The biggest drops came at high schools. In Thousand Oaks, attendance was off by 50% at the city’s three high schools, officials said.

Meanwhile, in Ventura, Buena High School and nearby Balboa Middle School were briefly evacuated in the afternoon after phoned-in bomb threats, school and police authorities said. Both proved to be hoaxes.

“It’s been a wild day,” said Joseph Spirito, superintendent of the Ventura school district. “No, make that a wild week.”

Frazzled administrators spent much of the day attempting to quell students’ fears that schools would be bombed or visited by armed attackers after last week’s massacre in Littleton, Colo.

Students and their parents seem unnerved by a wave of threats and bomb scares that has hit at least eight Ventura County campuses this week. A 15-year-old Newbury Park High School student was arrested Thursday on suspicion of posting a hit list containing the names of the principal, teachers and students on a Web site. The student has apologized and said he meant it as a prank.

The same day, a student at Hueneme High School was questioned and arrested after leading police to a cache of suspected pipe bombs in his home. The student, 18-year-old Jose Carlos Herrera, told police that he built bombs as a hobby but did not intend to harm students or the school.

“Parents, staff and students are very concerned,” said Frank DePasquale, assistant superintendent at the Moorpark Unified School District. “But we can’t have this distracting us much longer. We have finals and [advanced placement] tests coming up.”

In Ventura, Buena High School’s 2,200 students were evacuated about 1:15 p.m. after administrators were told that a bomb threat had been called in to a 911 dispatcher at the California Highway Patrol.

A male caller used a cellular phone to make the threat at 12:46 p.m., authorities said. The caller, apparently trying to disguise his voice, said a bomb would go off at Buena at 1:30 p.m.

Authorities believe the same person called 911 a few minutes later and warned that a bomb would also explode at Balboa Middle School.

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At Buena, teachers were handed notices that warned of the bomb threat and ordered to immediately evacuate their rooms.

The students gathered on the baseball fields while a team of school administrators, custodians and a Ventura police officer inspected the grounds. Nothing was found, and students were allowed to return to classes shortly before 3 p.m.

Ventura Police Lt. Gary McCaskill said three police officers were sent to Balboa Middle School about 1:10 p.m. They combed the grounds while teachers searched classrooms, McCaskill said.

A Balboa administrator, however, denied knowledge of the bomb threat, saying police officers never advised him. Assistant Principal Lane Jackson said the school was scheduled to conduct a fire drill about the same time as the threatened bomb explosion.

“We didn’t know a bomb was supposed to go off at 1:30,” Jackson said. “We did the fire drill because of what happened at Buena earlier.”

Sheriff’s deputies were also sent to Rio Mesa High School about 1 p.m. Friday after school officials received a telephone call warning of a bomb there, Sgt. Paul Higgason said.

Deputies went to the Oxnard campus and took a report, but students were not evacuated. No suspicious devices were found, but an announcement went out over the public address system asking students with cellular telephones not to use them, Higgason said.

Officials at several schools said they added security, posting police officers, extra school administrators and even parent volunteers to supervise school grounds.

“We have tried to assure everyone that our schools are safe,” said Kathryn Scroggin, assistant superintendent in the Simi Valley Unified School District, which did not record any drop in attendance.

High rates of absence at some schools could have a financial effect because schools are funded, in part, on the number of days students attend, officials said. Richard Simpson, assistant superintendent for the Conejo Valley Unified School District, said the district could lose $50,000 for the flood of absences at Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park and Westlake high schools.

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While absences typically are excused only for sickness or other reasons of necessity, Simpson said the district would be understanding of parents who kept children home based on “generalized fear.”

However, if students are gone from school several days in a row, their grades may be lowered or they may be prohibited from taking part in extracurricular activities, such as athletics, Simpson said.

“We’re certainly not trying to take a punitive approach,” he said. “But we’re trying to not let fear and terrorism shut our schools down.”

Ventura’s Spirito said attendance was down quite a bit at the city’s two high schools. Nearly a quarter of the 1,800 students at each campus did not show up, he said. Hueneme High School Assistant Principal Tom McCoy also reported a drop.

Despite officials’ precautionary measures, some parents are not convinced that all will be well. Newbury Park mother Terry Jump kept her 15-year-old daughter, Lindsay, home from Newbury Park High on Friday and said she will ask Monday that Lindsay be placed in a home-based independent study program.

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Times Community News reporter Holly J. Wolcott and Times staff writer Daryl Kelley contributed to this report.