Last week this paper received an anonymous letter from a parent of a student at Mt. Hope High School, alleging certain health and safety issues occurring within the school that had troubled them to the point of concern — including an assertion that the school’s PA system was broken and unusable when a lockdown drill occurred following a series of hoax threats were called in to schools throughout Rhode Island last Monday.

While our policy requires letters to come with a name attached in order to be published (the letter isn’t appearing in print for this reason), the allegations raised within it seemed to warrant a response from Principal Michelle King and Superintendent Ana Riley — who did so via email earlier this week.

The letter alleged that the PA system had been broken at Mt. Hope High School for “the last few weeks”, and constituted “gross negligence” that it had not been fixed yet, further alleging that if the incident on Monday had not been a hoax, it would have put students and staff in peril.

Principal King confirmed via email Monday morning that the PA system has, indeed, been out of order for approximately three weeks, but that, “the vendor was out to the high school immediately to assess the situation, determined the issue and then ordered the necessary part. The part was on backorder and estimated to arrive in mid-April but arrived yesterday [April 3]. The vendor was at the school today [April 4] to hopefully finalize the repair. We actually anticipate this to be operational by the end of the day [April 4].”

King further added that the school has taken steps, while not ideal, to keep people alerted during moments of possible crisis.

“We have communicated the issue to our faculty and staff that classroom phones will be utilized as an interim solution,” a joint statement from Riley and King read. “We are mindful that this is not ideal for some locations within the building and we have taken steps to ensure those areas of the building receive time-sensitive communications. In addition, we are working on the installation of a phone in the Gym area. The safety and security of our students, faculty and staff is our top priority, and we continue to work with our school resource officer and the Bristol Police Department to ensure that we are complying with all school safety regulations.”

Question on bathroom repair
The letter also made allegations that a “majority” of bathrooms at Mt. Hope were out of operation or locked throughout the day, and the ones that are open have broken stall doors or broken locks.

The joint statement from Riley and King seemed to indicate this was an exaggeration.

“All of the restrooms at Mt Hope are in working order with the exception of one of the boys restrooms due to a plumbing issue. The necessary parts have been delayed and we hope to have this restroom repaired as soon as the parts arrive,” they wrote. “We can confirm that there were two incidents where a bathroom stall door and bathroom stall wall were each in disrepair due to vandalism. Both issues have been repaired and restrooms are fully functional.”