AHS Janitor Rumor: What Really Happened

At 7:37 am on Friday, April 22nd, an article was published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel titled “An Arrowhead staff member has resigned over comments about ‘sniping people from the roof’” by Drew Dawson. 

In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, Dawson said, “An Arrowhead High School staff member has resigned after making inappropriate comments relating to ‘sniping people from the roof’ if he were ever fired.” 

Dawson goes on to write that the witness did not feel Reimer was being serious and that they did report the comment to the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department and the school resource officer days later.

From this, rumors, and talk about this incident swirled throughout Arrowhead Union High School school. 

Senior Marina Evert said, “When I first heard about it, I was questioning whether the whole thing was a rumor or just pieces of it.” 

At 10:03 am on April 22, Arrowhead staff received an email from Director of Business services Jeff Gross addressing the article and incident and assuring the safety of Arrowhead students. 

In this email, Gross wrote, “The event was thoroughly investigated by Arrowhead administrators, resulting in no actual threat being found to the two adults in the room at the time the comment was made, nor any threat to students, other staff members, or the school as a whole.”

Another senior, Nick Catania, said, “I just thought the whole thing was crazy. I guess I didn’t really question whether or not it was a rumor.”

Then, at 1:29 pm on April 22, both staff and Arrowhead families received an email from Superintendent Laura Myrah with the subject line “Dispelling rumors of supposed threat to Arrowhead.”

Myrah first addressed the rumors saying, “because rumors of ridiculous proportion are now flying around, I am writing to dispel those rumors and even to perhaps preserve the personal reputation of a man who was an employee of Arrowhead for almost 23 years.” 

She went into the subject matter of the incident similar to what Director of Business services Gross explained. Myrah disclosed that while Reimer was on an unpaid leave of absence because of this situation, he then resigned from his job at South Campus on April 14th. 

She ended the email with this, “I hope this information dispels the sensationalized rumors we’re hearing and reading … there was NO teacher involved, there was NOT deceitful cover-up of a danger to students, there were NO guns on campus, etc.”