‘This is about keeping our kids safe’: Mon superintendent appreciates response to MHS threat
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MORGANTOWN - Everybody got an A on Thursday, Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
The superintendent of Monongalia County Schools was referring to all the parties that answered a threat that morning at Morgantown High School.
An anonymous call to Morgantown Police around 9 that morning promising violence at the school on Wilson Avenue sent everyone scrambling, Campbell said - from first responders to teachers and staffers in the building.
The scene was later cleared at 11:30 a.m., he said. The working lockdown, which meant no one was allowed out of the school or into the school for the duration, was lifted.
"I was impressed by the level of communication and collaboration," the superintendent continued.
"I'm talking on the school level, the district level and with Morgantown Police."
Flashing lights and wailing sirens have punctuated the proceedings before at Morgantown High.
In December 2022, MHS was one of several schools across West Virginia hit by a swatting hoax, whereby a caller makes a threat in order to get as many police, fire and ambulance units as possible to the scene.
A person on that morning four years ago claiming to be a teacher at Morgantown High called in, saying several students had been shot by a gunman roaming the hallways.
The 99-year-old MHS couldn't be more stately in its architecture, Campbell said.
What is "stately," for one though, he said - can just as easily be as worrisome for another.
Especially, he said, for those who make a career of rolling up on circumstances where danger might be present.
"Yeah, there are a lot of unique challenges there," he said.
Morgantown High was built in a horseshoe-style configuration around its athletic stadium on Pony Lewis Field.
The building's features include a labyrinth of maze-like hallways, recessed stairwells and multiple entrances - besides sitting smack in the middle of Morgantown's tightly packed South Park neighborhood.
Campbell, as said, praised all the responders and all the teachers and staffers involved Thursday morning.
Local taxpayers, too, he said.
After all, he said, they're the ones who traditionally vote in the affirmative for the excess levy of education which has been on the books since 1975.
The levy's ledger which gives the district the resources to outfit every building across Morgantown and Mon with Safe Schools entrances and uniformed school resource officers.
Such measures are more than necessary, he said, at a volatile time where violence in school hallways has become increasingly commonplace.
According to numbers culled by Education Week, the industry trade journal, 18 school shootings were reported from Washington state to Mississippi in 2025.
Four students and three adults were shot dead in the onslaughts. Another 44 were wounded, the publication said.
Which now means, Campbell said, that every phone call and every social media missive has to be given equal attention - no matter what.
"You can't discount anything in today's society," he said. "We're never going to do that. This is about keeping our kids safe."