A handful of parents addressed concerns raised by the Dec. 14 incident during a Rogers City Area Schools Board meeting Monday night.

The parents asked for revisions to policies in how school officials respond to and notify parents of potential violence involving the school.

While many parents and students believed a student had verbally threatened gun violence during a fight at school on Dec. 14, police reports show otherwise, according to Presque Isle County Prosecutor Ken Radzibon, who spoke at the meeting, not as part of the parents’ group.

A scuffle broke out early in the school day when an 8th grader, quoting a television program and, Radzibon said, trying to be clever, said he would kill anyone with a mullet hairstyle.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Greg Zurakowski, left, and Nick Hein talk at a Rogers City Area Schools Board meeting on Monday.

“A pretty stupid statement, I think we’ll all agree,” Radzibon said.

The comment led to a physical altercation and the 8th grader’s being slammed against a school wall by a high school boy.

At least one student told the school resource officer the threat mentioned guns, but in interviews with police, students acknowledged they heard mention of a gun second-hand. After an investigation, police concluded the school was at no risk, Radzibon said.

School officials suspended both students, but neither student’s parents wished to pursue criminal charges, Radzibon reported.

Had police received consistent statements from witnesses or found other credible evidence of an actual threat against the school, he would not have hesitated to quickly file criminal charges against the student making the threat, Radzibon said.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Alpena Police Chief Jamie Meyer stands at the back of a meeting of the Rogers City Area Schools board as parent Amber Alexander shares comments with the board on Monday at Rogers City High School.

The day after the fight, many parents kept their students home from school, having heard about an alleged threat via social media and receiving no message from the school saying police had declared the school safe.

Rev. Greg Zurakowski, board chairman, told The News that, in retrospect, the school should have published a generic statement once officials knew parents were worried about the rumor.

At the time, as he decided how to advise Superintendent Nick Hein, Zurakowski didn’t know how to refute something he knew to be untrue without potentially making the situation worse. Schools have protocol in place for emergencies, he said, but not necessarily for emergencies that don’t happen.

At Monday’s meeting, parent Amber Alexander, criticizing the school’s policies as outdated, said the board failed to follow policy when it did not treat the threat as a school-wide emergency.

Alexander asked the board to consider changes to school policy, including ensuring doors not be propped open and not allowing police interviews of students without parents’ presence.

Board member Ivy Cook agreed that some of Alexander’s suggestions were valid and said the board would discuss them.

Kristie DesJardins, representing some parents attending the meeting, also spoke, calling the board members and other school staff immature, lazy, deceitful, disrespectful, egotistical, inarticulate, and unintelligent before Zurakowski asked her to confine her remarks to comments about the December incident.

In early December, students at two Alpena schools had to miss two days’ instruction because of alleged threats involving guns made by a junior high and a high school student.

Police submitted reports about their investigation into the alleged threats to Alpena County Prosecutor Cynthia Muszynski in December. Muszynski could not be reached on Monday to confirm whether she intends to request criminal charges against the students.

Montmorency County police said last week they had no update about a police investigation after officials closed Hillman schools for more than a day when someone reported a threat written on a wall at Hillman Jr./Sr. High School last month.

Hillman Community Schools officials last week informed parents via a social media post that the schools had heightened security measures in response to the alleged threat, including backpack checks and limits on restroom use.

Michigan police have reported hundreds of threats against schools, many made via social media, since a student killed four and injured seven during a shooting at Oxford High School on Nov. 30.

The student faces criminal charges, as do his parents.

Also at Monday’s meeting, Hein told the board he had secured about 800 take-home COVID-19 tests and is awaiting information from health officials so he can authorize parents to use the tests at home.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the school district has logged more full in-person days of school than any other district in lower Michigan, Hein said.

This story has been edited to reflect that Kristie DesJardins spoke at Monday’s meeting as a representative of some parents attending the meeting. That information was unclear in a previous version of the story.