Bomb threats are something Alta High Principal Ken Rowley is all too familiar with.

On the afternoon of Jan. 4, 2023, a former student approached a teacher at Alta, handed her a backpack, and left with little explanation. Unsure of the contents of the backpack, the teacher took it to the school’s Student Resource Officer who checked the school’s surveillance cameras to discover the former student had entered the school building with two other bags they couldn’t account for. “That’s when we said, we’re going to evacuate,” Rowley says.

As it turns out, no incendiary devices were discovered. Such is the case with most bomb threats, the vast majority of which are false alarms or hoaxes. But no matter their nature or location, all threats are thoroughly investigated in Canyons School District and taken seriously.

“I will always land on the safety side,” Rowley says, “and if that means we send students home early or evacuate the building and come back, we’ll do whatever we need to do to make sure the kids are safe.”

November is the month for Canyons District’s elementary schools to practice responding to a bomb threat. Middle and high schools perform “secure” protocol drills.

During a bomb threat exercise, employees will review investigatory protocols, but for students, the drill will look like a regular school evacuation. An evacuation protocol is enforced when there is a need to move students, employees, and visitors out of a school building to safety due to some sort of unsafe condition within or close to the building. Depending on the location or nature of the threat, a school might also decide to shelter employees and students inside the building.

In the case of Alta’s bomb scare, Rowley believes they did the right thing and he’d make the same call again.

Students at Alta were evacuated to a nearby church where they were bused home for the day or parents were able to pick them up. Rowley says everyone from faculty and staff to the District level stepped in to help.

“I was just impressed with how the adults in this building responded and stepped up,” says Rawley. “We had counselors here who all stepped in and helped. Teachers stepped up and walked with students down to the church, staying with them until the buses left and parents were able to pick them up.”

Now that all Utah schools are using the same terminology and using the same safety protocols — the Standard Response Protocol — Rowley believes whether it’s a drill or an actual threat, the unified procedures will help keep all students safe.

“I think the new protocols improve our response time and prevent you from freezing or stopping for a minute to breathe and think, ‘okay, what’s my next step?’” admits Rowley. “It just becomes muscle memory.”

You can learn more about the safety plans in place for an evacuation within the District with this safety video.