Jacobs High locked down to head off food fight

It all started with an innocent year-end prank.

Some students at Jacobs High School brought engorged water balloons to school Friday, where they launched them in the hallways.

Word spread through the Algonquin school about the timing and location on the prank via text message and soon a couple hundred students - most of them just observers - clogged the halls.

That's when Principal Michael Bregy and his staff became concerned.

"It isn't so much that it was a water balloon," Bregy said Monday. "We're not overreacting. It was about that mob mentality that became unmanageable in a narrow hallway."

During the weekend, Bregy received "a plethora of e-mails and text messages from parents and students telling me that on Monday there's going to be more water balloons, there's going be chocolate sauce, soap and water and a massive food fight."

But because of the vigilance of the Jacobs staff and Algonquin police, little of that mischief came to pass on Monday, the last regular day for Jacobs students.

On Sunday, Bregy met with his administrative team and they created an action plan that included shorter passing periods, a police presence and teachers escorting students to lunch.

The plan worked.

"One student poured soap and water on the stairs," Bregy said. "That was the only incident we had."