Garden City Middle School was evacuated Monday after a bomb threat, sending students outside while police investigated the Cherry Valley Avenue campus. Police later determined the threat was unsubstantiated.
In a separate January 30, 2023, incident, Patch reported that staff received a phone call stating there were multiple bombs placed inside the building, prompting officers and school staff to safely evacuate the students. Garden City police then conducted a search of the building and surrounding area with help from school staff, a Garden City Fire Department chief and Nassau County police officers, the outlet reported. Once that sweep was finished, the incident was deemed unfounded, and students were safely escorted back into the building while investigators continued working to trace the origin of the call.
News 12 New York reported that Garden City police were alerted to the threat around 11:20 a.m. and that the middle school was evacuated under the school district's emergency plan. Police determined the threat was unsubstantiated after their investigation and sweep, according to the station. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Kusum Sinha, cited by News 12, said after-school activities were canceled Monday out of caution.
A Separate 2023 Scare
A separate episode occurred in March 2023. News 12 reported that a lockout was ordered at the school following concerning phone calls about a possible external threat. The next day, students were evacuated and dismissed after a threat, the outlet reported.
Back-to-back scares have become a familiar pattern across Nassau County schools this year. The same reporting from Patch's crime roundup noted that officers responded to Garden City High School in June after Homeland Security received a possible bomb threat by email, and the outlet said officers searched the exterior and interior of the school and found no credible threat. In that case, the same Patch report noted, Garden City police arrested a 22-year-old Franklin Square man on charges related to falsely reporting an incident and stalking.
Similar False Alarms Across Long Island
On October 16, 2026, a bomb threat aimed at the Hicksville Public Library forced a lockout at nearby Hicksville High School, Hicksville Middle School and Lee Avenue Elementary, according to Newsday. Arson and bomb squad specialists responded and determined there was no threat, Newsday reported, while police took an unidentified person who allegedly made the threat into custody.
Other Long Island schools have faced the same unsettling routine. An anonymous threat scrawled on a bathroom wall at South Side Middle School once forced administrators to evacuate the building, according to the Herald, with Rockville Centre police and the Nassau County bomb squad searching the building with a bomb-sniffing dog before finding nothing. Garden City Middle School itself has a history with these calls, too: a threat once put the school on lockdown around 1:52 p.m. before police and administrators concluded no direct threat existed, per Patch, and detectives later identified a Garden City student as the person responsible for a bomb threat called into the middle school on March 16, according to gcnews.com.
Federal officials have repeatedly warned that these calls carry real consequences even when no bomb is ever found. The FBI's Seattle field office has said that posting hoax threats to schools and other public places puts innocent people and first responders at risk, disrupts schools, and wastes resources. Nationally, 92 percent of public schools reported having procedures in place for bomb threats during the 2021-22 school year, according to federal data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
For now, the investigation into who placed Monday's call to Garden City Middle School remains ongoing, and no arrest or charge tied to this specific threat has been reported.
