Getty/Angela Weiss
A Pennsylvania school sent students home early this week after receiving an anti-trans bomb threat.Perkiomen Valley School District is embroiled in a debate over bathrooms and transgender students.An email claimed “bombs” had been planted at the school and a Target to punish “perverted freaks.”
A school district outside Philadelphia sent thousands of students home early on Thursday after officials there received an emailed threat promising death and destruction if trans students were allowed to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
In a post on Facebook, Perkiomen Valley School District, located about 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, said it had been forced to carry out an early dismissal after receiving threats “specific” to the district.
The school district has been mired in debate over transgender students. About 17 out of 1,700 of the district’s students identify as transgender, according to administrators, and the school board has been debating whether they and other students should be able to use bathrooms of their choosing, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
That debate has attracted national attention from conservative and right-wing media outlets. A recent walkout by some students who want the school board to bar transgender students from deciding where to relieve themselves — sparked, in part, by a parent who said on social media that his daughter saw someone who might not have been a biological female in the bathroom — was covered by Fox News, The Daily Mail, and The Daily Signal, among others, in the days ahead of Thursday’s incident.
“Pennsylvania teens dead right on Perkiomen Valley trans bathroom insanity — and pols need to listen,” The New York Post editorial board opined on Wednesday.
A copy of the threat officials were sent was shared by The Pottstown Mercury, which reported that the district had made the decision to close after consulting with local law enforcement. Classes resumed Friday.
“We placed a bombs at Perkiomen Valley High School, district buildings and a target [sic],” the email stated. (Tara Parr, supervisor of communications and technology systems at the school district, confirmed to Insider that the reported message was the one the school received.)
Target, which operates a store a few miles from the school — and was the target of a right-wing boycott over its in-store LGBTQ+ Pride displays — did not immediately confirm whether it had received or was otherwise made aware of the threat.
The emailed threat accused the school of having “failed to create a safe learning environment for its students” and accused staff of being “willing to put girls at risk of being sexually assaulted and raped, disregarding their comfort so that you can assert yourself as being progressive woke heroes.”