Parents and students at The Brooklyn Latin School — one of New York City’s eight highly selective specialized high schools — have been living with repeated violent threats since last spring, with no clear end in sight.
I’m one of those anxious parents. My son is a sophomore at Brooklyn Latin, and I’m part of a large group that feels this has gone far beyond any kind of “prank” — especially now that schools have a no-phone policy, which I actually support. But every time the building is evacuated, hundreds of families are left in the dark, waiting for a text to confirm that the 800 students at Brooklyn Latin — plus another 600 kids in the middle and high schools that share the building — are okay.
The bomb threats started toward the end of the 2024–2025 school year. At first, many assumed it was a student trying to dodge a Latin exam or a math quiz. But when classes resumed after Labor Day in 2025, the threats came back, too — and they escalated. The calls became more frequent and started to include threats of fires and stabbings, not just bombs.
Because the calls are placed from an untraceable number using a VPN, detectives at the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, have said there’s only so much they can do besides repeatedly sweeping the building to confirm there’s no active danger.
“They all seem resigned to the idea that, beyond sending in teams to search, nothing more can really be done,” one frustrated parent says of the NYPD. When that parent asked whether the FBI could get involved, an officer suggested they “call the FBI themselves,” the parent recalls.
On Nov. 5, the NYPD held a town hall to address the worried school community, but officers again emphasized the limits of their power to stop the threats. They urged families and staff to call in any tips that might help.
In a follow-up email after the town hall, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Public Information said only that there had been no arrests and that the investigation is still ongoing.
On Dec. 8, another threat was called in. The next day, Dec. 9, there were two bomb threats in a row, both placed on the same morning.
One father says that when he shared his concerns with a detective, he was told he should “take his kid to a school in Manhattan” instead of Brooklyn — a suggestion that stung, given that Brooklyn Latin is one of the highest-ranked public high schools in the city.
Mother Anissa Rodriguez, whose son is now in his third year at Brooklyn Latin, says, “Not only was this his first choice for a specialized high school, but it’s also one of the top-rated schools in the nation and in New York. It’s incredibly stressful and disheartening that they’re being hit with constant bomb threats and the local police still don’t seem to have a handle on the situation.”
When asked for comment, DOE Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a statement, “The safety of our students and staff is our very top priority. We take every threat extremely seriously, including working directly with our local law enforcement partners, to keep every person in our community safe.”
For many parents, those reassurances don’t go far enough.
“Our school community has been dealing with repeated bomb threats and the constant fear that this time, one of them might be real,” one parent says. “What makes it worse is feeling like the response hasn’t matched the seriousness of what’s happening. After so many incidents and so many sweeps, we still haven’t seen the kind of coordinated action we expected from the NYPD, and the FBI hasn’t stepped in. We’re just asking for a thorough, urgent investigation and real confidence that our kids are being protected.”
When reached for comment, the FBI said it could not comment on the record but might provide a statement after reassessing the situation.
The students themselves are exhausted by the repeated disruptions. One Brooklyn Latin student sums it up simply: “We really just need this to stop.”
