When a Joke Isn’t a Joke: Why School Threats Demand Serious Attention
On a school morning like any other, disruption often begins quietly. A message appears on a phone. A screenshot circulates. A post is forwarded to a group chat. Within minutes, the routine rhythms of a campus begin to break down.
Administrators move quickly behind closed doors. Teachers receive instructions to hold students in place. Law enforcement arrives. Students wait in classrooms or hallways. Parents refresh their phones, scrolling through social media while trying to separate rumor from reality.
Sometimes the threat turns out to be a hoax. Sometimes it originates hundreds of miles away. The disruption and fear, however, are always real.
Across Texas, schools are confronting a rise in threats that blur the line between impulsive remarks and genuine danger. Increasingly, students describe these moments as jokes. Educators and safety experts know better.
“A threat is a threat,” said Kathy Martinez-Prather, Ph.D., director of the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University. “It doesn’t matter how it was intended or where it was made. Every single one has to be taken seriously.”
A shifting landscape
Martinez-Prather has been with the Texas School Safety Center since 2007 and served as its director since 2015. She came into the role not as a school safety specialist but as a researcher tasked with solving a specific problem.
“My first assignment was figuring out statewide data collection for school safety audits,” she said. “At the time, I wasn’t aware of much related to school safety. The law had passed, and they needed someone who understood data.”
That work quickly expanded. As districts began submitting safety and security information, patterns emerged, and so did new questions. How were schools using the data they collected? What changed on campuses as a result?
“We focus on research with relevance,” Martinez-Prather said. “Research that informs practice. If it doesn’t translate into training or resources districts can actually use, then we haven’t done our job.”
Over the past two decades, the center’s work has grown alongside school districts’ responsibilities. Today, it provides training and technical assistance to public school districts and charter schools across Texas. That includes training school behavioral threat assessment teams and reviewing emergency operations plans.
As the work has expanded, so has the nature of threats themselves. Martinez-Prather observed that technology has fundamentally changed how threats spread and how quickly they escalate.
“We talk a lot about student safety and rightly so,” Martinez-Prather said. “But we also have to ensure that educators feel safe, because if they don’t, they’re not going to be effective in the classroom.”
Kathy Martinez-Prather, Ph.D.
Director of the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University
“Social media allows information to be shared at the push of a button,” she said. “Historically, after a highly publicized act of violence, we see what we call a contagion effect. Threats increase around anniversaries and major events.”
What has become more prominent in recent years is the rise of swatting and hoax threats aimed at K-12 schools. These false reports, often made anonymously, are designed to provoke a large law enforcement response and incite fear.
“These incidents disrupt learning, create emotional distress, and put a strain on emergency response systems,” Martinez-Prather said. “Even when they’re determined to be false, the experience is real for the people who lived through it.”
Texas districts have felt that impact acutely. In 2022 and 2023, law enforcement agencies responded to waves of false shooter reports across the state, triggering lockdowns and evacuations in both large urban districts and smaller rural communities.
“There’s a psychological toll that doesn’t just disappear once you say it wasn’t credible,” she said.
Prevention, not just response
While emergency response often captures public attention, Martinez-Prather is quick to emphasize that prevention sits at the center of the Texas School Safety Center’s mission. Although Texas State University also houses the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, which focuses on response, the School Safety Center concentrates on what happens long before a crisis unfolds.
“Our emphasis is prevention,” Martinez-Prather said. “Behavioral threat assessment, early intervention, and making sure systems work together instead of in silos.”
Threat assessment, she explained, is not about predicting violence based on appearances or stereotypes. It is a structured process that looks at behavior and context to determine appropriate intervention.
“You don’t have to wait for a threat to be made to act,” she said. “Behavior tells us a lot.”
Teachers often notice those signals first. Subtle shifts in behavior or engagement may not be alarming on their own, but together they can point to a student in crisis.
“Teachers interact with students every day,” Martinez-Prather said. “They have information that administrators might not see, and that makes them critical partners in prevention.”
That role has grown as safety concerns have become more urgent for schools.
“School safety used to be a backseat conversation,” she said. “Now it goes hand in hand with academic achievement. Students cannot learn if they do not feel safe.”
A new message takes shape
As threats increased, districts began asking the Texas School Safety Center for help educating students directly. Those requests led to the launch of the center’s first public awareness campaign, Threats Are No Joke, in August 2025.
“We were getting calls from administrators and school police officers asking if there was anything we could do to help educate students,” Martinez-Prather said. “We didn’t want to sensationalize the issue. We wanted to educate.”
The campaign’s messaging targets students from fourth through 12th grade, along with parents and educators. Its central public service announcement shows how a single message can escalate quickly, triggering fear and a full law enforcement response.
“One of the biggest misconceptions we hear is that students think they can joke about these things,” Martinez-Prather said. “They don’t understand that even sharing a threat can have consequences.”
The campaign includes more than a video. Toolkits provide classroom guides, parent conversation starters, posters, social media graphics, and templates districts can adapt for local use.
“We knew a video alone wouldn’t be enough,” she said. “Schools needed resources they could actually use.”
For Sebastian Salazar, a 17-year-old senior at Veterans Memorial Early College High School in Brownsville, the campaign’s message hit close to home.
“Sometimes people say things, and you don’t actually know if they mean it or not,” Salazar said. “A lot of students think it’s a joke, but sometimes it’s not.”
Sebastian Salazar
Senior at Veterans Memorial Early College High School in Brownsville
“Sometimes people say things, and you don’t actually know if they mean it or not,” Salazar said. “A lot of students think it’s a joke, but sometimes it’s not.”
Salazar serves as a Texas School Safety Center Teen Ambassador, a role that allows students to design safety-focused initiatives in their schools and communities. His interest in safety was shaped early by his father’s career in the Border Patrol.
“Safety was always a big priority in my household,” he said. “By the time I was five, I was learning run, hide, fight.”
At his school, Salazar founded a student-led group, the Students Know Committee, focused on school safety and teen mental health. The group operates on a simple premise: students often know what is happening on campus before adults do.
“We’re kind of the ears of the school,” he said. “We hear things first.”
That perspective becomes critical when threats circulate among peers or are dismissed as humor.
“There was a threat at my school where someone even gave a date,” Salazar said. “A lot of students joked about it. That really scared me, because that’s how people get caught off guard.”
He believes peer-to-peer messaging is essential.
“PSAs like this are eye-opening,” Salazar said. “They make students realize there are real consequences to what they say.”
Reporting threats, especially when friends are involved, remains one of the most difficult challenges.
“A lot of people see it as snitching,” he said. “But it’s really not.”
Salazar frames reporting as protection for everyone involved.
“It’s better for them to talk to a counselor than to end up talking to a police officer later,” he said.
Inside the administrator’s office
For educators responding to threats, preparation often collides with reality.
Allyson Haveman retired in June 2025 after 39 years in Texas public education, including more than two decades as a campus administrator. Her career included time at alternative campuses, the Lubbock County Juvenile Justice Center, and Lubbock High School, where discipline and safety were constant responsibilities.
“When something went wrong, it was threats to kill a teacher, threats to kill another student, or threats of violence,” Haveman said. “That happened all the time.”
Responding required a careful balance of urgency and judgment.
“You isolate the student, you get law enforcement involved, you call the parent, and you investigate,” she said. “You don’t assume. You don’t minimize.”
That investigation involved retracing events, reviewing camera footage, speaking with teachers and witnesses, and closely observing the student.
“You watch body language; you listen carefully,” Haveman said. “You’re trying to understand whether this is an angry kid popping off or something more serious.”
Even when a threat turned out to be impulsive, the response could not be casual.
“You still have to look into it,” she said. “That’s part of keeping people safe.”
Haveman also emphasized how discipline decisions affect classroom trust.
“If a kid is removed from a classroom, sending them right back sends the wrong message,” she said. “It undermines the teacher and the learning environment.”
The toll on educators
Threats do not exist in isolation from the people tasked with managing them. For teachers and administrators, each incident adds strain to an already demanding job.
Haveman said the emotional weight of handling threats often accumulates quietly, especially for educators who spend years responding to crises that rarely make headlines.
“There’s a psychological toll that comes with this work,” Haveman said. “You’re always on alert, always thinking about what could happen next.”
That vigilance extends beyond school hours. Administrators replay events and anticipate how students might react when they return to campus, even when a threat turns out to be unfounded.
“We don’t want people second-guessing whether they should report something,” Haveman said. “If something feels off, it needs to be addressed.”
Allyson Haveman
ATPE MEMBER
“You don’t just flip a switch and go back to normal,” Haveman said. “You still have to show up the next day and be steady for everyone else.”
The stress can also be physical. Haveman described multiple occasions where she was injured while intervening in fights or volatile situations.
“I’ve been hurt breaking up fights,” she said. “And I’m not unique in that. A lot of educators have stories like that.”
Martinez-Prather said these realities underscore why educator well-being must be part of any serious school safety strategy.
“We talk a lot about student safety and rightly so,” Martinez-Prather said. “But we also have to ensure that educators feel safe, because if they don’t, they’re not going to be effective in the classroom.”
According to Martinez-Prather, repeated disruptions and investigations can erode a teacher’s sense of stability, even when no violence occurs.
“It creates anxiety. It disrupts the learning environment,” Martinez-Prather said. “Over time, that matters.”
Haveman said the strain deepens when teachers feel their concerns are not taken seriously or discipline decisions appear inconsistent.
“When teachers don’t see follow-through, it affects trust,” she said. “They start wondering if it’s worth speaking up the next time.”
Haveman warned that hesitation can be dangerous.
“We don’t want people second-guessing whether they should report something,” Haveman said. “If something feels off, it needs to be addressed.”
Building trust
When a threat emerges, fear rarely stops at the classroom door. Parents and caregivers experience their own surge of anxiety, often fueled by incomplete information and rumors that spread quickly online.
Haveman recalled incidents where parents rushed to campus during lockdowns, driven by a need to see their children and regain control of an uncertain situation.
“I understand that instinct,” Haveman said. “If it’s your kid, you want to be there.”
Those moments, she said, also require trust in the systems schools have put in place.
“If there’s an active threat or an investigation underway, we need space to do what we’re trained to do,” Haveman said. “Parents showing up can actually make things more complicated.”
Part of the tension comes from mismatched expectations about how quickly situations can be resolved.
“This isn’t television,” Haveman said. “You don’t solve these things in 15 minutes.”
Investigations often involve coordination with law enforcement to determine whether a threat is credible. That process takes time, even when schools are acting decisively.
Martinez-Prather warned that misunderstandings about the process can erode trust.
“People sometimes assume that if they’re not hearing details right away, nothing is happening,” she said. “In reality, a lot is happening behind the scenes.”
And communicating that reality to families is not always straightforward.
“Transparency has to be balanced with safety,” Martinez-Prather said. “And that balance isn’t always visible from the outside.”
Haveman emphasized that trust is built long before a crisis occurs, through consistent communication and relationships.
“If families trust the school on an ordinary day, they’re more likely to trust us on a hard day,” she said.
A shared responsibility
Across different experiences, the message is similar: communication and trust play a critical role in prevention.
“School safety is a daily effort,” Martinez-Prather said. “It is not something you think about only after something happens.”
For Salazar, the message to students is both empowering and urgent.
“You do not need a title to make a difference,” he said. “Just being a student means you can speak up.”
For Haveman, it is a call for dialogue over outrage.
“If something feels wrong, come talk to the school,” she said. “Have a conversation.”
The Threats Are No Joke campaign will continue rolling out resources at key points during the school year, including before breaks and during periods when threats historically increase. The Texas School Safety Center plans to study how districts use those materials and refine the messaging with continued student input.
The message itself remains simple.
“If it feels uncomfortable, report it anyway,” Martinez-Prather said. “It is always better to say something.”
Because in Texas classrooms, words carry weight, and the cost of dismissing a threat as a joke can be far higher than anyone expects.
David George
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