Parents at Carbondale Middle School are raising concerns over how the school communicated a potential gun threat last week after some families learned about the situation from their children before receiving a schoolwide notification.

The situation began Sunday, Sept. 13, when Roaring Fork School District officials were made aware of a social media post from a Carbondale Middle School student’s account that referenced bringing a weapon to school.

Roaring Fork School District Public Information Officer Kelsy Been said a Safe2Tell report came in at about 8:40 p.m. that night. By around 11 p.m., Aspen police had told the district there was no credible threat to student safety and had shifted its investigation toward a possible cybercrime involving unauthorized access to the student’s account.

The Aspen Police Department declined to comment on the situation, citing the ongoing investigation.

Police were then present at Carbondale Middle School on Monday, Sept. 14. Carbondale Middle School Principal Cora Carballeira said in an email the increased police presence was intended as a community service to reassure students and staff after law enforcement had determined there was no credible threat.

The district did not send a schoolwide message to families until about 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15.

That delay has become the central concern for some parents.

Parent Alexander Young said he first learned something had happened when he picked up his seventh-grade son from school Sept. 14.

“He was like, ‘Yeah, the police were at the school today,'” Young said. “At first, I thought it was just the resource officer that he was talking about, and then as he expanded, I realized it was something much more.”

Roaring Fork School District Chief of Schools Joel Hathaway said he is confident the district followed its safety protocols but acknowledged its communication could have been better.

“I am very confident that we took the proper steps of our safety protocols to keep the schools safe, and I think that we learned some lessons about our communications that will lead us to improve our practice in the future,” Hathaway said.

He said the district is always trying to balance the need to communicate with families against the risk of creating additional anxiety.

“I acknowledge that there are some places where we may have missed the high bar that we set for ourselves in terms of communication,” Hathaway said. “But I believe that we did everything that we needed to do to keep the school safe, and that’s what’s most important.”

The district’s Sept. 15 message told families it had learned over the weekend of “a concerning post from a CMS student’s account that referenced bringing a weapon to school.”

“We immediately contacted law enforcement, who investigated and determined that it was not a credible post or safety threat,” the message stated.

The notice also addressed group chats involving seventh-grade students and asked families to speak with their children about responsible social media use and cyberbullying.

Young said the timing and framing frustrated him, particularly because families routinely receive school communications about less serious matters.

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The Sept. 15 message was sent through ParentSquare, a communication platform the district adopted this school year.

“I’ve gone back and forth with the school just about the abundance amounts of notifications and phone calls they give us,” Young said. “So then to just give a random alert without a bunch of anything on it is frustrating.”

Superintendent Anna Cole said the district chose ParentSquare in part because it allows urgent messages to override parents’ notification preferences and reach families by phone and email without requiring them to opt in.

Cole acknowledged that an important message could be difficult to distinguish from the volume of routine school communications parents receive through ParentSquare.

“It’s meaningful feedback to know that, hey, we’re getting a lot and it’s hard to sort through what is urgent and what is good to know,” Cole said.

She said she understands why parents wanted reassurance sooner and said the incident also highlighted how difficult it can be to distinguish between an actual threat and information spreading through social media.

“That’s our number one priority and our number one commitment to families, is that we are going to do everything possible to keep our students safe,” Cole said. “The world that we live in is getting increasingly complex in navigating safety, what is real, what is not real, and threading that is tricky.”

“This scenario underscores the complexity of discerning when there is an actual threat to a school and when there is a rumor of a threat,” Cole added.

She said the district relies on law enforcement to help make that determination and needs to share confirmed information with families as quickly as possible.

Been said the district generally does not send broad communications to families around 11 p.m. and initially believed a message about something law enforcement had already deemed noncredible could create unnecessary alarm.

Still, she acknowledged the district should have communicated sooner.

“If we could go back, we would have communicated earlier,” Been said.

Hathaway said the district reached a similar conclusion about the overall timing of its response.

“This time, our timing didn’t help to relieve anxiety or concerns for parents,” he said.

Young continued seeking answers from the district in the days that followed, including questions about parent notification standards and the district’s threat-assessment process. The email exchange continued for several days before the district provided additional written responses.

Young said his concern was less about whether law enforcement ultimately found the threat credible and more about when families were told what had happened.

“If the police decide that there’s no threat here, that’s one thing,” Young said. “My thing, again, like I listed from the very beginning, is the concern of the response and the lack of communication to us.”