Wappinger’s High School Hold-in-Place Response Praised by Parents

Having a child be a part of a school's "hold-in-place" is terrifying as a parent, I can only imagine how scary it had to be for all of the kids involved.

Wednesday, January 19th, 2022 was a morning like many others for me, but just before noontime things got extremely tense as I received an email from the school that my 15-year-old daughter attends that announced that the school had activated a hold-in-place.

According to reports, the hold was executed due to a reported threat against Roy C. Ketcham High School in Wappinger's Falls, and like many parents, anytime something like this happens, the first thing I did was text my daughter to make sure she was OK.

After waiting about 10 minutes for her response (it felt like 6 days!!) she responded that she was OK. Thank GOD!! She did go on to tell me that the school was going to dismiss students early because of the threat and she was heading home with her mom.

Once the school announced that it was cleared and everything was safe, they sent another email out to parents to explain the day's events. They didn't go into details about who or what the threat was. Some students and parents have said that the threat had something to do with the school's WIFI/Hotspot name being changed to something that posed a threat to the school.

As the situation started to calm down, I started looking online for any information about the threat and started seeing many parents within the Wappinger's Central School district sharing their thanks to school officials for their response. One comment on one of the Hudson Valley moms groups on Facebook stood out to me more than any other with one mom saying,

I write this as tears are streaming down my face, that I cannot thank the NY state police and all the teachers and admins at RCK for possibly saving our kids' lives today. Their vigilance may have saved this community some awful heartache today....kiss your kids more tonight! And thank those admins and teachers!!

As a parent of kids in the Wappingers School District, I would also like to thank everyone who had a part in Wednesday's events. Job well done!!