What LA Kids Did When a Bomb Hoax Shut Down Their Schools

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District canceled school across the entire system, a virtually unprecedented move taken in response to email threats sent to school officials in both LA and New York. The threats, which mentioned teams of jihadists moving in on unidentified schools with explosives, machine guns, and nerve gas, were later determined to be a hoax—but not before the city's Department of Education abruptly released 640,000 kids across Southern California. (New York officials determined early on that the threats were fake and kept schools open.)

"It was not to one school, two schools or three schools. It was many schools, not specifically identified," LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said in a press conference early Tuesday morning. "I am not taking the chance of bringing children any place, into any part of the building, until I know it is safe."

And so, for the first time in recent memory, school in LA was called off—a move that caused major headaches for a whole range of reasons. LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country, with approximately 900 schools and 640,000 students across 720 miles. Given that Cortines decided to cancel school just a few minutes after 7:00 AM, hundreds of thousands of these students were already en route, or even at school, by the time they found out about the closure.

And though LAUSD is huge, it's not the only school district in the area—several parts of LA, including Compton, Beverly Hills, and Burbank have their own school districts, which led to a good amount of confusion over which schools were open and which were closed on Tuesday. Local hip-hop stations like KDAY and REAL 92.3 served as de facto information hubs, informing listeners which schools were open and closed, and sometimes even calling schools on-air to confirm.

For many parents, the school closings meant making auxiliary plans for their kids that day—calling in grandparents to pick kids up, taking off work themselves, or simply letting their kids go free and hoping for the best.

"My kids are losing their education," said Cedric Wright, a father of two six year-old boys who told me he was lucky enough to have the day off Tuesday. Wright lives in South Los Angeles, where several schools were closed. When I spoke to him, he was at a playground near Hoover Street, supervising his children as they played. "A lot of parents were devastated," he said, when they found out school was canceled, because that meant they'd have to take time off from work.

"It's a domino effect," he added. "If we can't provide for our households, then our kids can't get their education."

Nearby, an older woman was playing soccer with a young boy—her grandson, she told me in Spanish, explaining that her son had called her and asked that she pick the child up from school due to the bomb threat. He works in North Hollywood, she told me, and couldn't get back to pick the boy up in time. Some of the children at the playground appeared to be unsupervised. I asked her if she knew who they belonged to. She said she had no idea.

For older kids, the closings were more like a snow day, although most Angeleno students have likely never experienced one. A group of teenagers—who introduced themselves as Curtis, Chris, Carlos, and Sloth—said they weren't in school anymore, but that they'd all heard about the threats. "It's crazy scary," said Carlos. "It was all over Facebook," Sloth added.

Among kids and adults, there seemed to be a good amount of confusion about what was actually going on. One mother I talked to told me in Spanish that she didn't know anything about school being closed, and had her elementary school-age son talk to me. He'd seen that school was canceled on TV, he said.

Other kids told me they'd only found out school was canceled from friends. A group of teens who attended high school outside of LAUSD told me that their principal had decided to let kids leave early due to the threat, but as far as they knew, the school hadn't closed. Another kid who attended school outside the district said he'd used the threat as an excuse to skip school, telling his parents that his school had been included in the closures. (Later, when I asked to take a picture of him and his friends, he told me "no" and rode away on his skateboard; his friends then shrugged at me and got on their skateboards too).

The bomb scare turned out to be just that—a scare. The emails were sent from something called Cockmail, a stunt email server and "meme sewer" affiliated with 8chan, an anonymous message board used, in part, to post content that's been banned by 4chan. Cock.li's founder, Vince Canfield, confirmed Tuesday that he'd been subpoenaed by the NYPD for information related to the school threats. He also suggested there may be a larger takeaway from the day's events:

I have no sympathy with the attacker but if a few emails from my meme email provider can shut down your SD, that's an administration problem

— Vincent Canfield (@gexcolo)December 15, 2015

Later in the afternoon Tuesday, I headed over to Fairfax Avenue—a streetwear hub and popular teen hangout that's also close to a couple middle and high schools. I asked two employees sharing a joint outside the boutique the Hundreds if they'd seen more kids than usual because of the bomb threat. They told me they had no idea what I was talking about—and sure enough, the store was empty. Supreme, usually another teen hotspot, was pretty empty as well.

"One of our kids that comes by regularly came by," said Ricky, a manager at The Kayo Store, which features an indoor skate spot, told me. "We were like, 'Hey, how come you're not in school?' 'Oh, there was a bomb threat. A big mob of kids are on the way over to skate the park.'"

I asked Ricky if he felt like a babysitter sometimes. "More like I work at a daycare," he joked. "This is the first place parents call to see where their kid's at."

By the time school would have been letting out Tuesday afternoon, city officials had officially declared that the threat was not credible—a conclusion New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton had announced hours before. De Blasio even joked that whoever sent the emails might just be a fan of Homeland.

But if LAUSD's decision to shut down was an overreaction, it was perhaps an understandable one in a region that's still recovering from the mass shooting by Islamic State–loving terrorists in San Bernardino less than two weeks ago.

"It is very easy in hindsight to criticize a decision based on results that the deciders could have never known," Charlie Beck, the current LAPD chief, said at a follow-up press conference Tuesday. "All of us make tough choices… These are tough times. Southern California has been through a lot in recent weeks."

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