Los Angeles public schools to reopen Wednesday

Schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District will reopen on Wednesday, one day after they were closed due to a threat that officials now say was "not credible."
"Some have used words that I think are probably inappropriate like hoax and other things," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said. "Whether it's criminal mischief, whether it's somebody testing vulnerabilities of multiple cities, we still do not know enough to say definitively. What we do know is that it will be safe for our children to return to school tomorrow." More than 900 schools were affected by the closure, which came after school board members received emails saying explosives were left on LAUSD school campuses, and people connected to the Islamic State carrying guns would cause "further loss of life," the Los Angeles Times reports.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said the email "was in very good English — which is not a good sign. Most of the hoaxes that I see have syntax errors, a lot of incomplete sentences, non-sequiturs. So that concerned me." Beck said the emails weren't taken lightly, considering the mass shooting less than two weeks ago in nearby San Bernardino. "It's easy to second-guess decision-makers when you don't have to live with the consequences of the decision," he said. "These decisions are not something you get to do over again if you turn out to be wrong."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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