Threat sinks school trip on the Spirit of Philadelphia

A Bucks County school district announced this afternoon that it is canceling a series of elementary-student lunch excursions aboard The Spirit of Philadelphia after the cruise ship's headquarters received a threatening letter about one of the trips.

A statement released by Council Rock School District Supt. Mark Klein said that the ship's corporate owner in Chicago received a letter last month alleging that two parents were intending to "sicken their children, as well as others" during a lunch cruise for sixth-graders.

"The letter alleged the parents would then sue The Spirit of Philadelphia," Klein's statement said.

The threat was turned over to Newtown Township Police, who are investigating, police chief Henry "Rick" Pasqualini said.

"Not willing to take any chances, the school district and the cruise ship mutually agreed to cancel the lunch cruise," the district's statement said.

Parents were notified of the threats in a letter distributed on Friday. Those letters left open the possibility that the cruises might still go on, albeit without lunches being served.

Sixth-grade classes from eight of Council Rocks' 10 elementary school had been scheduled to take lunch cruises as part of field trips planned for late May and early June, the district said. While the cruises may be eliminated, the remainder of the trips - including visits to historic sites, and, in some cases, Citizens Bank Park - will still go on.

The statement said that because the matter is still under investigation, school district officials would have no further comment. Spokesmen for The Spirit of Philadelphia, both in Chicago and in Philadelphia, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Pasqualini said that the cruise ship company had contacted Klein after receiving the letter in the mail about three weeks ago. Klein then requested a meeting with Newtown police, Pasqualini said.

"He wanted to know what our take on it was," the chief said. "My position was that you have to treat all of these threats as viable, and it was assigned to one of my detectives. We have basically looked into every avenue that we could."

Pasqualini said the letter "was very vague, but the threat was real - that the children were going to be sickened as a result of this trip."

The school district statement said that, according to the letter sent to Chicago, two parents planned to make children sick during a Goodnoe Elementary School trip.

According to Diana Bilyk, the PTO president at Goodnoe, that trip is scheduled for June 1, and will also include students from Wrightstown Elementary School.

As late as this morning, Bilyk said she hoped that the cruise component could still be salvaged by having the students bring their own lunches. Pasqualini said he was under the impression that the river excursions were still on, but that food would not be served.

In response to an e-mailed question, Klein said that "the final resolution for these trips is in the hands of the varied PTO groups."

Pasqualini said that the postmark on the letter sent to Chicago was not readable, so he could say whether it had been mailed from the Council Rock area. He said it was unusual that the letter did not name the two parents who supposedly were plotting to sicken the students.

Serious or not, the threats are "really sad and very disturbing to our parents," Bilyk said. "We've been shaken, big-time."