Students return to Atlanta’s Crawford Long Middle School

The “all-clear” has been sounded at a southwest Atlanta middle school evacuated Friday morning because of a bomb threat.

Atlanta police spokeswoman Kim Jones confirmed at 9:30 a.m. that Crawford Long Middle School on Latona Drive was being evacuated. The threat was phoned in around 8:40, according to police dispatchers.

The students were taken to South Atlanta High School while police searched the campus.

The school was cleared by police about 11 a.m., and students “began re-boarding buses to return to campus,” Atlanta Public Schools spokesman James Malone said. “Classes will resume as normal.”

Donna McClain said she rushed to the school to check on her niece after getting a call from her sister about the bomb threat.

“My niece is about 12 or 13, and I know she’s very scared,” McClain told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“It makes kids not want to go to school anymore,” she said. “Kids have to go to school and get their education.”

Crawford Long Middle School was in the news last December when about a dozen students were taken to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston for treatment of exposure to pepper spray after a school resource officer used the spray to break up a fight between seventh grade girls.