Officers descended on Katherine Johnson Global Academy in West Baltimore on Monday morning, responding inside the school building after a bomb threat was called in on what was supposed to be a routine first day of classes. Police cleared the building of any threat, and officers began leaving the scene around 10:30 a.m.
According to WBFF, the Baltimore Police Department investigated the threat at the school, located on the 1101 block of Braddish Avenue, as students were arriving for their opening day. The station reported that officers were seen responding inside the building before police confirmed there was no danger and cleared the campus by mid-morning.
A New Building’s First Rocky Morning
The disruption landed at a school that only recently opened its doors. Katherine Johnson Global Academy debuted for students in August 2021 as a $53 million, 122,525-square-foot replacement facility built under Baltimore City Public Schools’ 21st Century School Buildings Program, according to the Maryland Stadium Authority. The campus was constructed to consolidate students from the former Calverton Elementary/Middle School, the closed Alexander Hamilton Elementary School, and the reconfigured James Mosher Elementary School into one building serving grades 3 through 8, per the same agency.
The school, at 1101 Braddish Avenue, enrolled 544 students for the 2026 academic year and serves as the zoned middle school for surrounding elementary feeder campuses, according to Baltimore City Public Schools. The building also earned LEED Gold environmental certification from the U.S. Green Building Council in July 2022, after energy simulations showed it performed 41.2% more efficiently than standard baselines, per data from Climatic Design LLC. It was renamed by the Baltimore City Council in 2021 to honor NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, whose orbital trajectory calculations were instrumental to early U.S. crewed spaceflights.
What Maryland Law Says About Threats Like This
Maryland law treats calling in a threat like Monday’s as a serious offense, even though it currently remains classified as a misdemeanor. Under Maryland Code Criminal Law § 3-1001, knowingly making a threat of mass violence against five or more people carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison, a $10,000 fine, and mandatory court-ordered reimbursement for the cost of the emergency response, according to the Maryland General Assembly…