A spate of threats to local schools has resulted in two arrests this week, as school districts around Colorado Springs respond to concerned parents.

“Over the last two weeks, we’ve received numerous hoaxes about school shootings in the area,” said El Paso County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Kurt Smith.

Among them were schools in Colorado Springs School District 11, where district spokeswoman Jessica Wise said that threats surfaced on social media platforms like TikTok, quickly spreading online. The threats, which included a generic list of schools that receive Title I federal funding, were determined to be noncredible.

“We really don’t want to feed the beast of allowing these things to perpetuate,” she said.

Academy District 20 sent out communications to specific school communities. In a statement, a spokesperson said the district would not release those communications or locations.

“In certain school communities, rumors were more broadly shared than others, and in the interest of not further spreading these rumors, we are not going to share which school communities received additional district communication,” the statement read.

D-20 did release a district-wide statement:

“Recently, our region has encountered a rash of rumors spreading on social media centered around vague and non-descriptive school threats. We have encountered these social media posts in our community, too, with multiple schools receiving Safe2Tell reports featuring the same vague and non-specific information.

“We want to make it clear to our community that safety and security is our top priority, and we will always investigate any and all threats that we receive in a timely manner. We also want to make sure our community knows that at no time have the posts we have investigated been found to be credible or specific.”

On Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Office announced the arrests of two minors in connection to hoaxes at two different area schools, in what Smith called “threats related to each other.” Those juveniles are facing charges in the incidents, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office did not respond to inquiries into the nature of potential charges.

On Thursday, Ellicott School District 22 sent students home after declaring a lockdown related to a

Gazette news partner KOAA reported threats were received in several area school districts recently, including Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8, Colorado Springs School District 11, Academy School District 20, School District 49 and Woodland Park School District.

Smith said that multiple threats were happening on a daily basis.

“At this time, we have not found that any of these threats have been credible, or actionable, or something that was about to occur,” said Smith.

The Sheriff’s Office has 10 school resource officers for 40 area schools. Smith said that several of the recent threats have been created or perpetuated by students. Colorado Springs police also work with local school resource officer staffing.

“We want those kids to know that there are consequences to their actions, and we will hold them accountable,” said Smith.

The Sheriff’s Office is urging parents to monitor their children to prevent false threat reporting.

“We want the parents to know they need to step up,” he said.

Threats can be reported anonymously through the Safe2Tell platform, as well as a call to law enforcement.