SCRANTON -- For the third time this week in our area a bomb threat disrupted school.
Administrators in the Scranton School District, along with administrators at Valley View and Lakeland said its school policy to evacuate a school or put the school on lockdown whenever there's a threat, whether the threat is credible or not.
But students Newswatch 16 talked to said that's a policy that seems to be taken advantage of.
A few hundred high school students in West Scranton were let loose a few hours early, many of them without their coats, books, or cell phones, and many of them didn't know why.
As some students walked home, they passed by their school that was surrounded by Scranton Police cars with officers searching inside.
According to school administrators, a message was found written on a tile in a girls' restroom threatening to blow up the school.
Teachers then followed policy, evacuating the high school and taking students to the nearby intermediate school, but as police searched to see if that threat was real the school day was called off.
The students all recalled something similar happening at two other school districts in Lackawanna County this week.
At the Valley View Middle and High schools a student reported the same thing, a bomb threat written on a wall. Per policy, students were sent home. Better safe than sorry, administrators said.
Another written threat was found at Lakeland High School near Mayfield. Students there were put on lockdown.
Fortunately, all three threats were unfounded according to police, but that doesn't mean whoever wrote them won't face any consequences. If caught, police said they could face several misdemeanor charges.