STUDENTS TO MAKE UP DAY LOST BECAUSE OF BOMB THREAT

CAIRO, Ill. -- Students in the Cairo School District will make up classes missed Friday following a bomb threat made to Illinois State Police.

State police received a 911 call at around 3:50 p.m. Thursday that warned that pipe bombs were in all four of the district's buildings.

State and local police and sheriff's deputies searched the buildings late Thursday but turned up nothing. Classes were canceled as a precaution.

An Illinois State Police spokesperson declined to comment Friday afternoon, saying only that the incident was still being investigated.

"Whether the threat is valid or not, you still have to proceed as if it were a valid threat," said schools superintendent Robert Isom Friday. "We have plans and procedures in place for events of this nature, and we conduct disaster drills and crisis drills throughout year at each building. It's not like we would have been unprepared."

Isom said the district has used up its five-day allotment of weather dismissals, as well as an "act of God" day it applied to the state for following bad weather in January.

That means the district's 1,000 students will have to make up Friday's canceled classes or lose a day of state funding, he said.

The district has received no other bomb threats this year.

Isom said a similar threat was made during school hours at the high school last year. School officials later learned that the call was made by a student inside the school.