LOS ANGELES — The e-mails arrived overnight Monday into Tuesday. They threatened the safety of hundreds of thousands of students in the nation’s two largest school districts, promising that a violent plan already had been set in motion and raising the specter of guns and bombs inside numerous classrooms.
New York City officials opted to open their public schools on time Tuesday, calling the message an amateurish hoax imitating a popular television series. But across the country in Los Angeles, Superintendent Ramon Cortines took a different tack, closing every school in his sprawling district in a move that disrupted the daily lives of more than 640,000 students and their families.
Maybe the threat wasn’t real. But maybe it was. And at a time when the world is reeling from terrorist attacks — including two weeks ago in San Bernardino, just an hour’s drive from Los Angeles — Cortines said he had no choice but to be cautious.
“I, as superintendent, am not going to take a chance with the life of a student,” Cortines told reporters at a news conference Tuesday morning.
By Tuesday afternoon, the e-mails in Los Angeles were being investigated as a hoax designed to disrupt school, said Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
And by Tuesday night, Los Angeles officials announced that the city’s schools would open Wednesday, having determined that they are safe.
The two cities’ divergent choices, made in the face of similar threats, are a sign of the murky calculus that government officials face as they try to protect the public without giving in to the fear terrorists seek to cultivate.
The two school systems also are very different. New York’s school system is enormous, covering more than 300 square miles and enrolling nearly 1 million students. Los Angeles Unified serves an area that is more than twice as large and stretches across the city, neighboring jurisdictions and unincorporated areas. Southern California also is still grappling with the aftermath of the San Bernardino attacks, which killed 14 at a workplace holiday party.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, was critical of Los Angeles officials’ decision to close schools, saying he didn’t want to “aid and abet” those who want to sow panic. “As leaders, it is our job to protect public order and keep things moving forward in this city,” he said at a news conference.
New York City Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, who previously served seven years as chief of police in Los Angeles, was equally critical. He called the e-mails a hoax and the response in Los Angeles “a significant overreaction.”
“This is not a credible threat and is not something we are concerned with,” he said. “What we are concerned with is overreacting to it. We will stay aware. We will stay involved but at all costs cannot start overreacting to what will probably be a series of copycat-type initiatives.”
To Los Angeles officials, the risk of inaction was too great. The district announced shortly before 7 a.m. that classes would be canceled, and officials pleaded with employers to give parents the flexibility to take care of their children. In addition to police, 13 other law enforcement agencies contributed to the effort to search each of the district’s more than 900 campuses. The FBI also said it was assisting with the investigation.
