BEATRICE - Beatrice Public School officials say several people have asked about a threat being mentioned and circulated on Facebook.


At issue is a Beatrice High School student who made a comment in class, heard by other high school students in that class. Over the weekend, officials say the story was "severely embellished", and there were calls made to the Beatrice Police Department of a possible "School Shooting" taking place on Monday.
The question for a speech class was "If you are dressing up for Halloween, what would you dress up as?" One student responded with the answer, "A school shooter".


"I think after everybody understands what the circumstance really was and our attempt to be as open as possible about what happened, I think everybody understands that the student made a comment, he probably wishes he would have not made...and so in hindsight, I think that student will reflect and would have made a different decision. The security measures that we took were absolutely necessary in order to make everybody feel better."


Superintendent Jason Alexander says the student was removed from school and will be transitioned back into classes. It was determined to be a very inappropriate comment with no intention for school violence. "In today's day and age, we just can't take those comments any way but extremely seriously, so it was absolutely imperative that we act quickly in response to the student's comment...and make it clear that that's something we don't take lightly here, and we never will."


Beatrice Public Schools has an active threat assessment team to respond to any reports of planned violence. District officials say they took the comment received very seriously and worked closely with the Beatrice Police Department. It was determined the reports circulated about a possible shooting incident all related back to the classroom comment and there was no danger in any school building.


"Anytime we have these type of situations arise...it's like anything. It's easy to just sit back and say why didn't you do this....why didn't you do that? We do that ourselves. We reflect on what we did. We'll get our threat assessment team together that deals with all of these situations and situations the community doesn't know about it. We will analyze what we did and how we did it...and ask ourselves...is there anything we could have done better or differently."


Alexander says the district’s anonymous P-Three campus reporting system for students came into play in this instance. "They can anonymously send a message to the P-Three campus and we have people on the threat assessment team and also the Beatrice Police Department that receive those messages....and so any time a student feels uncomfortable about any given situation they can report that. And, that's how this all came about over the weekend."


Some parents kept their children home because of the statement made by the student, which Alexander says they have the right to do.
Since the communication was all coming from the High School a message was sent to high school parents. Out of an abundance of caution, local law enforcement provided extra patrols near District 15 schools.