Brief lockdown at Calabasas High School meant two days of robocalls for parents

Calabasas High School was temporarily locked down Wednesday morning because of police activity in the area, said Principal C.J. Foss.

The school was locked down for about 20 minutes, ending around 9:40 a.m. There had been a crash on Old Topanga Canyon Road near the school, and the driver and passenger fled the scene, Foss said police told her.

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She said police told her the suspects had been apprehended, and the school has been reopened. Administrators sent calls and e-mails to parents when the school was locked down and sent a follow-up explaining the situation after it was over, she said.

“The kids did great. The staff did great. We’re all clear,” she said.

Calabasas High School is in the Las Virgenes Unified School District, so it didn’t shut down on Tuesday when the Los Angeles Unified School District closed in response to a threat. Still, parents received calls from Las Virgenes Unified on Tuesday alerting them that school was open. And to some, even though Wednesday’s lockdown was brief, getting district robocalls concerning potential violence two days in a row felt overwhelming.

Kevin Davis dropped his 15-year-old son, Jacob, off at Calabasas High School on Wednesday morning. Not much later, Davis received a text from his son about the lockdown. After that, Davis’ wife called the Sheriff’s Department in search of information, and Davis got several calls from the district.

“There’s this ringing off the hook,” he said. “The district wants to over-communicate and reassure people. I’d rather have that kind of information than have no information.”

Jacob asked his father to pick him up, but he was told to stay in school. “This is two days in a row in which they’ve had to face unknown threats and not focus on schooling,” Davis said.

Times staff writer Joy Resmovits contributed to this report.

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