Panther Valley School District found a school shooting threat was unfounded on Tuesday.

“There was allegedly supposed to be shooters in the school today, taking over where the other student left off. There was no credence to that,” Summit Hill Police Chief Joseph Fittos said, referencing last week’s threat from a student who said they would be the “next school shooter.”

News of the threat spread through social media networks on Monday evening, leading to numerous absences at the district on Tuesday.

“We did have a very large number of students that didn’t attend junior or senior high school today,” Superintendent Dennis R. Kergick Sr. said.

Kergick said that the matter was addressed quickly, though the public was left in the dark as to the district’s procedures for dealing with such a situation to ensure that nothing would interfere with an investigation.

“There are protocols, practices and procedures we utilize, just like any other school district, and people just don’t know what we do in these situations,” Kergick said.

“We take each and every threat quite seriously. We don’t have the luxury not to. If there was anything to be concerned about, the schools would have been closed down today.”

Kergick said that the district was made aware of the potential threat through several students around 4:30 p.m. Monday.

Social media sharing may have contributed to a misinterpretation of the threat and investigation, Kergick said. His decision to hold off on a statement was rooted in waiting until information had been confirmed.

“To feed into the nonsense of what people suspect and may have heard only feeds into those rumors and innuendo that’s out there,” Kergick said.

Fittos agreed, but emphasized that the police are still investigating any threats to school students and staff.

“We’ve been following through with tons of alleged threats. They’re not credible. Rumors are taking off like wildfire, but there was no threat to the safety of the students today,” he said.

Kergick, high school principal Joseph Gunnels and Fittos addressed the matter of credible safety threats with students on Tuesday.

“We did meet, the high school principal, Chief Fittos and myself, with each grade level to see if anyone expressed the desire to tell us something that we needed to hear,” he said.

Fittos said that he encouraged students to reach out to any adult if they felt like there was a threat.

Last week a 16-year-old student was taken into custody, charged with making terroristic threats and turned over to Carbon County Juvenile Probation.

“The criminal charges were filed,” Kergick said in regard to the incident. “As for anything else, I’m reluctant to say anything.”

In a letter released on Tuesday afternoon, Kergick said that the district will soon host a meeting to address school threats.

“We are considering holding a town hall in the near future dealing with the topic of school threats. We honestly want to hear your concerns and learn more about your feelings on school safety. We will reach out via our phone message system to inform you of the date, time and location,” he wrote.