Winnipeg High School Cancels Classes Due to Facebook Threat

A high school in Winnipeg’s North End cancelled classes for Monday after a shooting threat was posted on social media.

St. John’s High School, at the corner of Church Avenue and Powers Street, posted an alert on its website just after 7 a.m. It said the closure was made “due to a threat in the neighbourhood,” and that students and staff should not attend.

It did not elaborate on the nature of the threat, but Matt Henderson, superintendent of the Winnipeg School Division, said in an interview that it was “a school shooting-type threat.”

The post, which first showed up on Facebook Sunday night and became “pretty widespread throughout socials” within a short time, identified Tuesday for the shooting, according to Henderson.

“I don’t want to take someone who’s making threats at their word, and so we just made the decision [to close Monday] out of an abundance of caution … while police do their investigation,” he said.

“We just, you know, want to make sure that everybody is safe and want to reassure parents that schools are safe.

“These things are really rare. There are always people who want to destabilize schools and make them seem unsafe but schools are incredibly safe. It’s just in rare cases like this where we have to clamp down on it and really educate people who make these threats.”

Henderson said “it’s pretty easy to figure out who does it [posts the threat],” and had hoped to get the all-clear to re-open the school for afternoon classes. But that didn’t happen and a decision was made to keep the doors locked for the entire day.

The school sent emails to parents in the morning but some administrators were at the school to meet any students who didn’t get the message at the start of the day.

“We know that some people may not be able to connect with their email first thing in the morning,” Henderson said. “So there’s been a handful of students where we’ve just redirected them back home.”

It’s the second time in less than a week that threat has forced the cancellation of classes at a school in the city.

Bernie Wolfe elementary school, in the Transcona area, was closed on Feb. 4 after a threat was left on the school’s voice mail.

Every school in Manitoba recently underwent safety assessments, ordered by the Department of Education, after a student at Winnipeg’s Darwin School — a kindergarten to Grade 8 school in the St. Vital area — was assaulted in a bathroom on Nov. 27.