Bomb threat makeup days considered in Augusta

School officials in eastern Georgia are fed up with a rash of bomb threats this year.

The threats and resulting evacuations often cost money and class time, so much class time that students in Augusta may face an extended school year.

So, like makeup days for snow, they're considering recouping the lost class time by requiring students to stay in school longer during the school year.

Many of the the threats happen at middle schools.

Officials suspect that students make most of the threats.

They hope the makeup days would create peer pressure for the threats to stop, since the makeup days would cut into the students' summer vacation.

But some school board members are questioning whether extending the school year is the most appropriate and effective way to stop the problem, since a longer school year would mean an added cost to the school system.

They're also looking at other options, such as whether the drivers licenses of students caught making the threats can be removed, and if their parents can be fined.

Bomb threats at schools

Even top school administrators can't escape bomb threats.

Dr. Dana Bedden experienced one on his first day of school in Richmond County.

It happened on August 13.

Bedden, who had taken the reins of the school system in Augusta less than two weeks earlier, had just arrived at Glenn Hills Middle School for a visit when it happened.

"I'm pulling up to one of our middle schools and they were just going through a bomb threat, evacuations, as soon as I pulled into the parking lot." He said he hoped "that this is not an indication of what the year's going to look like, that we're not going to have a repeat of last year."

The Richmond County school system reported numerous bomb threats last year. Officials say 70 of those threats occurred at only two schools.

A bomb threat also happened at a high school in Jefferson, Georgia, in October, just as Kathy Cox, the state schools superintendent, was paying a visit there.

State schools take on bomb threats

Officials in Augusta say their schools are getting far too many bomb threats.

They're joining school boards across the state in an effort to punish the parents of students who make those threats.

Officials say 70 bomb threats came in to schools alone in Richmond County last year.

The public safety response to each threat typically costs the county about $4000 to $8000.

The Georgia School Boards Association says bomb threats are a problem across the state.

Now, they want the legislature to pass a law holding parents accountable for a student's terroristic threats, school violence and theft.

"When we're taking and diverting resources from safety personnel to respond to a false alarm, that means someone else is not getting service and we are passing on a burden of cost to taxpayers that shouldn't be there, because of something that was not a real issue to them," says Dana Bedden, the Richmond County school superintendent.

The threats also disrupt classes, since principals often evacuate the students.

Suspects are often students, according to officials with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

In Richmond County, officials say some of the suspects are middle schoolers.