Parents wait in line at Sebastian River High School Monday afternoon to pick up their kids, brought there from Storm Grove Middle School.
“It was kind of scary," said student Amber Yates.
“Fortunately they did the right thing and moved them," said parent Scott Welcome.
Parents were generally happy with the district response and while it may have cost many just time, it also cost money.
“This will probably cost the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office thousands of dollars," said Sheriff Deryl Loar.
Sheriff Loar didn’t have an exact dollar amount, but when his office gets this kind of call, it takes top priority.
“We deploy all available resources. We even called out some of our specialty units such as our bomb sniffing dog team as well as bomb detecting trained deputies, we pulled them out," said Loar.
At Treasure Coast High School in Port St. Lucie, a similar bomb threat had been made around the same time.
“All I hear is they were telling everyone to evacuate the school and I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know if something bad was happening," said TCHS Freshman Lexi Dreyer.
13 Port St. Lucie officers responded to the high school. An approximate cost for 2 hours at the average salary and benefits for an officer.. $1,028.
Then add in the cost of the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s bomb team.
At $94/hour for the two bomb techs plus $100 hour for use of the bomb disposal truck, a minimum three-hour deployment costs $582.
That’s $1,610 without taking into account any costs the school district may incur.
These scenes have become all too common. In Palm Beach County, there have been at least 23 false threats this school year.
"Even if it's a prank or not, we're going to take it to the full prosecution because it causes such a disruption to the campus to everybody," Palm Beach County Schools Police Chief Lawrence Leon told Newschannel 5 in January after a threat in Wellington.
At the end of the day Monday, there were relieved parents, but aggravated that someone would put them through this.
“Children scared and parents scared for them. This world needs a lot of help," said parent Tom Yates.
Both Storm Grove Middle and Treasure Coast High School will open as usual Tuesday morning.
