Tri-Point High School in Cullom, Illinois, will be back in session Thursday, a day after school officials canceled classes because of an alleged bomb threat.
School officials determined that the threat was not credible but needed to be taken seriously for the sake of safety.
“The days to be able to brush something off, assuming that something is nothing, puts people in danger,” said Jay Bennett, superintendent of the Tri-Point Community Unit School District. “We will treat everything as credible until we prove that it is not.”
Classes were canceled at Cullom’s Tri-Point High School Wednesday after school officials learned of the potential threat Tuesday evening.
According to a letter from Bennett posted on the district’s Facebook page shortly before 6 a.m., school administrators and law enforcement officers spent the night trying to determine the credibility of the note but needed more time to complete their investigation.
School officials worked with members of the Livingston County and Ford County sheriff’s departments and the University of Illinois K-9 unit. A full sweep of the high school building was conducted on Wednesday, Bennett said.
“Although our initial investigation gives us confidence that there is no viable threat, due to the timing of the situation and out of an abundance of caution for our students and staff, we have made the decision that the high school will not be in session today, January 15th, to allow the investigation to progress,” the letter stated. “As this situation is isolated at the high school, the junior high and lower elementary buildings will run as normal.”
Tri-Point High School is located at 100 E. Van Alstyne St. in Cullom, Illinois.
Classes were held Wednesday at both Tri-Point Junior High/Elementary School in Piper City and Tri-Point Elementary School in Kempton.
“We only had the high school closed to continue our investigation into the morning,” Bennett said. “A lot of that was due to the timing of information coming to us last night. It did not make it conducive to wrapping things up (Tuesday) night.”
Cullom is a town of about 500 people and 20 miles east of Pontiac in Livingston County.
Tri-Point High School, 100 E. Van Alstyne St., has a student population of 114 students.
This is the second time in the past 30 days that a Livingston County school district has had a potential threat to school safety.
On Dec. 19, Prairie Central Community Unit School District 8 responded to a rumor that a student was going to bring a weapon to school by closing the district’s six schools on Dec. 20, the last of day school before winter break.
Prairie Central Superintendent Paula Crane has since said that there was nothing to the threat, and that it appeared to have come from somewhere outside of the district.
Erich Murphy is a reporter for the Pontiac Daily Leader.
This article originally appeared on Pontiac Daily Leader: Central Illinois high school to reopen after bomb threat investigation