It seems Watson Chapel can’t get a break.
This week, there was a smell of natural gas at the high school, which prompted the district to evacuate the building, and the students were moved to the football field. That’s the school’s “safe place.”
It seemed the all-clear was going to be given, but those out looking for the problem wanted to do more looking around, so at that point, school officials pulled the plug on the school day.
One student, a junior, was taken to the hospital because, as a relative put it, the gas smell put the girl, who has asthma, in a tailspin. To hear the district describe her problem, she had a panic attack. Either way, the incident created a problem for her.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Perhaps it sounded more odd than it was, but school officials reached out to the campus community later in the day to say that the report of a smell of gas had been “unsubstantiated.” Unsubstantiated as in the people who smelled gas hadn’t really smelled gas? We will just check the “unclear” box on that one.
All of that went out on an alert system, which is used to send out texts to parents and others. And in the short time school has been in session this year, there have been three such bursts of bad news sent out. In one case, a person who had no business being on campus was on campus and was found to have illegal drugs and a weapon.
In another case, someone called the campus to say there was a threat on the campus. Police came but didn’t find any substance to the threat, so school continued. And that’s not the first time that has happened.
There have been other incidents, for sure, with some more serious than others — such as when a young man was planning to bring a gun to school — and one of the most serious involving the murder of a student a few years ago. That one stands alone and was so horrendous it’s difficult to even bring it up.
Many of those problems don’t tie back to something wrong that Watson Chapel did. One problem in particular does and happened last year, when the district failed in a number of areas to get ready for school and the state came in to put the district on probation for two years.
We keep thinking the bad occurrences have run their course and it’s time for Watson Chapel to hit some smooth water and have the wind at their back. We can only imagine how ready the staff, students and parents are for that to happen.