ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A bomb threat forced the evacuation of William Allen High School in Allentown on Monday, cutting short the first day of classes and sending students home by midmorning. A police search of the building and grounds turned up no suspicious items.
The threat upended the opening day of the 2026-27 school year, which began Monday for all Allentown School District students. William Allen, at 106 N. 17th St., enrolls more than 3,000 students in grades nine through 12, according to federal education data, making it one of the largest high schools in Pennsylvania.
Officers responded to the school at approximately 6:45 a.m. in response to a report of a bomb threat, according to a news release from Allentown Assistant Police Chief James Gress. Police did not say how the threat was received or who made it.
Allentown police and the Allentown Fire Department, working with district staff and security, swept the building and grounds with a police canine team and additional canine teams from neighboring jurisdictions, the release said. The search turned up no suspicious items, and the investigation remains active, according to the release.
The district notified families via text message at 8:26 a.m. that the school had been temporarily evacuated due to the threat. Students were dismissed at 8:45 a.m., and buses arrived at the stadium at approximately 9:15 a.m. to take home students who receive transportation, according to the alert. Parents and guardians were also permitted to pick up their children.
Video posted to Facebook by David Duece showed hundreds of students filling the bleachers at J. Birney Crum Stadium, the district-owned stadium next to the school, as they waited to leave.
“The Allentown Police Department treats these incidents very seriously and will aggressively investigate and prosecute anyone responsible for making false bomb threats to the fullest extent of the law,” the department said in the release.
Monday’s threat follows a wave of similar incidents in Allentown schools last school year — but none arrived this early. Last year’s string of threats did not begin until mid-September, and a review of news coverage in recent years found no prior instance of a bomb threat disrupting a first day of classes at the school.
By late September 2025, the district had logged four bomb threats — two of them at William Allen — district officials said at the time, and students at Allen were again sent to Crum Stadium during a September evacuation.
Within weeks, police charged four students, ages 14 and 15, with felony terroristic threats in connection with threats that prompted lockdowns at Allen and Raub Middle School. This is at least the fourth consecutive school year in which a hoax threat has disrupted classes at Allen, which was also targeted in a statewide swatting wave in March 2023 and a string of false tips in November 2022.
Making a bomb threat is a Level 4 infraction — the most serious category — under the district’s student handbook and can result in long-term suspension, alternative educational placement or expulsion.
Word of the evacuation spread quickly on social media, where parents in local Facebook groups voiced frustration and alarm Monday morning. Several wrote that their children were sent home almost as soon as they arrived, and others called for whoever made the threat to be held accountable.
Police asked anyone with information to call detectives at 610-437-7721 or the police desk at 610-437-7753, ext. 1. Anonymous text tips can be submitted through the Tip411 app, available on the Allentown Police Facebook page or the department’s website.
The department said there would be no further comment on the investigation at this time.
