Pickaway-Ross Career Center closed both of its campuses for the day Monday after receiving bomb threats, while Waverly City Schools in Pike County operated on a two-hour delay following a separate reported threat. It is not yet clear whether the two incidents are connected.
The career center's main campus and its adult education campus were both affected, according to a school Facebook post cited by WSYX. The school said it was closing so that law enforcement could perform a complete sweep of both locations. Waverly City Schools, meanwhile, altered its schedule because of a reported threat, pushing back the start of classes by two hours rather than canceling the day outright.
WSYX reported it had requested information from both the Ross County and Pike County sheriffs' offices, and as of publication, responses from both agencies were still pending. Whether Monday's threats against the career center and the Waverly district came from the same source, or were part of a broader pattern, remained unclear.
A District Already Rattled by a Recent Threat
Monday's delay was not Waverly City Schools' first brush with this kind of disruption this fall. Just 18 days earlier, on September 17, the district canceled classes entirely after an early-morning bomb threat, according to 10TV. That closure affected the same Pike County district, which operates four main school buildings under Superintendent Bill Hoover, who took the district's top job in April 2023 after 30 years as a teacher, principal, and administrator there, per the Waverly City Schools website.
The disruption also lands amid a run of similar threats at Ohio career and technical centers this autumn. On September 29, Mid-East Career and Technology Center's Buffalo Campus in Guernsey County was evacuated after a written bomb threat was found in a restroom, with bomb-detection K-9 teams clearing the building, according to the Guernsey County Sheriff's Office. Five days before that, Miami Valley Career Technology Center in Englewood canceled classes after a morning bomb threat required bomb-detection dogs from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to sweep the building, WHIO reported.
Ross County's Own History With School Threats
Ross County, where Pickaway-Ross Career Center's sweeps unfolded Monday, has its own recent history with these disruptions. In January, Huntington High School was evacuated and searched by sheriff's deputies and bomb-sniffing K-9 units after a phoned-in bomb threat that ultimately proved non-credible, Hoodline previously reported. And in September 2023, Ross County deputies arrested a 15-year-old student who had posted a false bomb threat against Paint Valley Schools on social media, a hoax that forced class cancellations and explosive sweeps by state and federal authorities, according to the Scioto Post.
Felony Charges Await Perpetrators Under State Law
Under Ohio law, anyone found responsible for a false bomb threat that forces a school evacuation or schedule disruption can face prosecution for inducing panic, a charge that escalates to a second-degree felony when an educational institution is targeted, per Ohio Revised Code Section 2917.31. That statute has teeth statewide: federal prosecutors indicted an 18-year-old in June on six federal charges after linking him to a March swatting campaign that hit at least 17 Ohio high schools with hoax bomb threats, Hoodline has reported.
The broader pattern stretches back further still. In September 2024, Springfield, Ohio, issued an emergency proclamation after a wave of more than 30 bomb threats targeted local schools, healthcare facilities, and government buildings across the city, a disruption Hoodline covered at the time. For Pike and Ross county families now watching two separate investigations unfold at once, the scale of that statewide pattern offers little comfort, even as law enforcement in both counties has a track record of pursuing charges once a threat is traced to its source.
