CLARK COUNTY — A local school district continues to investigate after a cellphone search ended with parents and students outraged.
The incident happened at Northwestern Junior/Senior High School last Thursday.
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News Center 7’s Ava Petrosky first met with parents and students last Friday. Today, she spoke with other parents who say they are concerned about safety in the future.
One parent told News Center 7 that he’s worried students will not take safety drills seriously in the future after last week’s incident because some students claim they were in lockdown, but the superintendent denies it.
Phillip Bauer, from Pike Township, said: “You’re locking people in their cells and making them conform to whatever your demands are, searching for contraband and its cellphones.”
Parents spent their weekend demanding answers. “We want to know what happened. Who approved it, who knew, and there’s been nothing so far,” Bauer said.
The cellphone search by school officials last week left students and parents in an uproar.
Bryleigh Perdue, of Springfield, said, “I was very uncomfortable. It felt like he was only targeting us, and I mean, why is a grown man asking young girls to lift their shirts in front of other men?”
It started with an announcement over the loudspeaker that scared students into thinking something bad was going on.
“I didn’t really have an idea of what was going on,” Perdue said.
Many students told their parents the school had been put on lockdown. News Center 7 reached out to Superintendent Ryan Rismiller about that claim. In an email to News Center 7, he said, “We are finding that the terms “lockdown” and “shelter in place” were not used.”
Parents are still worried.
“I don’t think next time that there’s a lockdown, and maybe it’s a valid lockdown, then is anybody going to take it seriously?”
News Center 7 stopped by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office to see if they are investigating, and they are not. The case is being handled by the school district, which said its investigation is still going on.
News Center 7 also received an email statement from the Northwestern Teachers Association President Karen Olmsted. It said, “As educators, the safety and well-being of our students is always our top priority, and we strongly condemn the actions of the administrators who conducted these searches.”
Students and staff had Monday off for a pre-planned event on the schedule that is unrelated to last week’s incident.
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