This is not true. Attendance was at about 50% yesterday. I don't know why they are attempting to mislead parents with these false statements, but attendance was nowhere near 92%. We even received a recorded message from John Dwyer confirming students were kept home yesterday. We need some trasparency here and parents need to be able to trust the integrity of the information the school is providing.

Yes, my son said maybe half the students were there. The administration and school district needs to be more forthcoming if they want to continue to have parent trust. This makes it look like they're just trying to sweep this incident under the run. I figure they've lost maybe $200K in funding for absences yesterday.

Those looking for transparency, integrity of information, and a more forthcoming administration at Foothill are likely to be disappointed. John Dwyer is a pleasant man, but transparency and directness are not his strongest qualities.

Really people. "Looking for Transparency" and "sweeping under the rug". If I'm not mistaken this is a police investigation, quite likely other law enforcement is also involved, thereby limiting the amount of information allowed to be disclosed, particularly given the given the highly critical, rush to condemn, nature of this board who will obviously weigh in with more senseless opinions and criticism. So, education community, how about sticking a cork in it and let law enforcement and the district do what they need to do and curb the 'I have a right to know attitude'for just five minutes. Remember, this isn't TV where everything gets solved in 60 mins including commercials...

@Joe No one is asking for info on the investigation. Just the truth (transparency) when it comes to reporting the facts about attendance yesterday. They were lucky if they had 50% of students in attendance. Whether trying to downplay situation or whatever, did they think sending out a statement that there was about "90% in attendance" would go unchallenged?

When they lie about that it makes people what else are they lying about.

Nancy nailed it. This is exactly how I feel. We have to make decisions and need facts to be able to make them. It's horrible that I'm being forced to get information from social media and students when accurate information should be coming from the school. Not commenting or stating they can't comment would be preferred over putting out false and misleading information. I don't feel like I can trust anything they say or that we will be properly informed of any future risks to our children's safety.

I would tend to side with Dwyer on this, who I know very well, and have emails to attest to it, but you know I don't support administrators. But among the 50% in attendence about 92% of them appeared pretty normal. It depends on what is meant by normal, and of course what metric one desires to use. Links will follow.

Nancy s. wrote: "Just the truth (transparency) when it comes to reporting the facts about attendance yesterday. They were lucky if they had 50% of students in attendance. Whether trying to downplay situation or whatever, did they think sending out a statement that there was about "90% in attendance" would go unchallenged?"

Nancy, so what if the attendance was 50% or 92%? Why is this such an important sticking point with you? It may be an interesting statistic for the curious, but It has absolutely no relevance to the police investigation or on the safety your child if he/she goes to school. Seems to me that you're wasting a lot of energy focussing on the wrong things here.

@sam:

For me personally, the issue is that they lied. They should have not said anything about attendance instead of providing false information since in reality the number of kids there didn't impact decisions about sending our own kids to school because most of us made that decision well before they released this false number. It shows a willingness of the administration to lie when it sees fit and creates a situation where it's hard to trust anything they say.

Foothill parent wrote: "Nancy nailed it. This is exactly how I feel. We have to make decisions and need facts to be able to make them."

You're going to make a decision on whether or not to send your child to school based on whether or not 92% or 50% of other parents are sending their kids to school? Yeah, that will be a good lesson to your child on how one should think for oneself.

FHS Mom wrote: "For me personally, the issue is that they lied."

Strong accusations like yours call for strong facts to back them up. Are you prepared to present some strong, solid facts to back up your statement? No? I didn't think so. Do you habitually call people liars without any solid proof?

@sam

We got a recorded phone call from John Dwyer and he in it he acknowledged many students stayed home, a direct contradiction of the statement from earlier in the day that attendance was not impacted. Why give false Information early in the day? It's as if they were forced to come clean which is how it seems this whole incident is being handled. They should say nothing if they can't for whatever reason provide facts.

for a Used Car Salesman is Integrity.

Once you learn to fake that, your In.

(The Nixon Approach!)

Lori wrote: "They should say nothing if they can't for whatever reason provide facts."

Yeah, and if he had done that then you and the other parents here would be condemning him for not being more "open" or "forthcoming". Do it occur to you that maybe that's why he made the "92%" comment in the first place?

@sam My point is: If FHS Admin.; PUSD Admin are willing to blatantly lie about the attendance numbers, what else are they lying to us about???

I wouldn't make my decision on sending my kids to school on whether other parents do or not.

Also, Sam, look at the headline of the article, it is about the attendance.

The comments from the school/district are all over the board. The original comment from FHS was that attendance was at 92% present, with many away from the campus for sporting events.

Now they make it should like they said 92% absent.

My personal opinion while at school yesterday was about 50% out, which seems to be the number they are finally coming up with. Lots of $$$ lost there. I sure hope they find the student that pulled this prank.

FYI - the pranksters in Tracy (2 high schools) and Newark were caught. Seems in Tracy they wanted to disrupt the CAHSEE.

@Sam;

You might want to read the article you ate posting about because in it the superintendent states over 1,000 kids were out yesterday despite the earlier claim by PUSD saying attendance was normal earlier in the day. This is about half of the student population and certainly not the 92% they falsely reported. I'm sensing you aren't a parent which is why you aren't able to understand the concerns of those of us who are and are troubled by the school and district providing inaccurate information on such an important issue. It's tragic that social media is what is keeping them honest and leaves parents like me scrambling for factual information about the safety and well being of my child.

As far as I can tell FHS admin have been transparent. This was from the district office, not site.
" Pleasanton Unified School District spokeswoman Nicole Steward said earlier that about 110 students were away from school Thursday, including the cheerleading squad and lacrosse team that were traveling to events out of town. Other students also were on on school-organized field trips, she said."

Another FHS parent wrote: "I'm sensing you aren't a parent which is why you aren't able to understand the concerns of those of us who are and are troubled by the school and district providing inaccurate information on such an important issue."

Your "sense" is wrong. I am a parent. My daughter goes to Lydiksen. And, no, I didn't have any concerns about safety. In my opinion, the safest day of the school year for any Pleasanton school child to go to school is the day after a hoax like this one. Real threats don't publicize their intentions on bathroom walls in advance.

@sam:

Since you don't have a child at foothill then you probably haven't been receiving the multiple calls and emails foothill parents have. I'm glad that you haven't been put in a position to have to worry about your child's safety as I wouldn't wish what we have been faced with on the most evil among us. I know I speak for many FHS parents in saying that we've done our best to do what we felt was right for our own children based on the information we had. I hope to never be in this situation again as there's nothing more important than the safety and lives of our children.

Another Foothill parent wrote: "Since you don't have a child at foothill then you probably haven't been receiving the multiple calls and emails foothill parents have."

Wrong again. Did you seriously think that PUSD would limit the email and phone call alerts to just Foothill High parents? We've been contacted by both phone and email. You're panicking over a prankster. If and when a real threat comes, it will come without warning. Mull over that for a while.

I do take school safety very seriously, but I think that attention needs to be directed against identifying and taking preventative actions against real threats. To the extent that we overreact to pranksters, we divert attention away from real potential threats.

@sam:

You clearly just want to engage in a debate. No, you most definitely did not receive the multiple calls and emails from FHS principal, John Dwyer, that FHS families received. You received only the district's messages which we also received. You have no idea what FHS families were told in the FHS specific communications. And frankly, this is a good thing because it meant that the elementary school your child goes to didn't receive a direct threat, but that the district still added resources to all district sites and communicated this to you with phone calls. Look, none of the FHS parents wanted or liked being in this position and it's wrong for anyone to criticize the decisions made, no matter what they decided, when we all wanted nothing more than to know our kids were safe. If you don't have a teenager as you say, then you didn't see the twitter feeds and Facebook posts related to this being exchanged among FHS students which ultimately ended up being the source of the most accurate information. You need to back off and trust that we parents made the best decisions we could and understand that it's important that we know we can trust those tasked with keeping our children safe all day. I certainly trust that you woulda me the right decision for your child just as we made the best for ours.

@ Sam:

Call the district if you have any further questions about attendance levels or communications sent out multiple times to FHS families only. You clearly don't know what you're talking about and seem to want to insert yourself in an issue none of us wanted to ever be a part of. I'm very pleased your child was safe and you were secure in knowing this when he/she was dropped off.

EWWWWWW pleasanton is so gayy freaking out over bathroom graffiti. If tht happened in Oakland they would jst brush that off like nothing.

@mimi

Go back to watching your cartoons and looking for toys in your cereal box. Please log off mom's computer so you're not sent to your room again for misspelling and misusing "gay."

I love the quote "then you didn't see the twitter feeds and Facebook posts related to this being exchanged among FHS students which ultimately ended up being the source of the most accurate information". Since when are twitter feeds by teens the "most accurate source of information"!! You believe everything they tell you right? Sam is right save it for the real threats, cause you won't see it coming. It won't be announced on a bathroom wall. How about the real threats of drunk or impaired driving, depression, suicidal thoughts, pressure to succeed, peer pressure? Real everyday threats to our teens that you don't think apply to your teens or their friends. When this bathroom wall bs blows over the real threats will still be there. But yeah everything they say is true on twitter and facebook and what they tell you.

My guess is that FHS and the police have identified the graffitti perp and are working out help for that person, looking further into the background factors. Perhaps they don't have it down so tight that they want to (or can) prosecute, or perhaps they do. But good for them for not being public with their leads. Can you imagine the barrage of criss-cross unwanted attention the perp would receive, only making a very bad situation worse.

Everyone has an opinion, and so many commenters sound like they think THEY should have guided the action, the decisions, the after-effects. That they would have done better. Let's give the boots-on-the-ground folks credit that they handled a difficult situation with lots of tough choices in such a way that no one was hurt. Can we please be grateful instead of critical? I am grateful and want to thank all who worked on this crisis.

I say we have a GREAT police department, and a GREAT FHS leadership team. I say they did the best they could, wanting only the best outcome for all. Which they pretty much got.

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