"So I texted my daughter," she said. "She let me know something went off in the lunchroom, that it was hard to breathe because of pepper spray."

Fluegel said the school has notified her in the past with automated phone messages for upcoming events.

"It will call you with an automated thing coming up on your phone stating this or that is happening at the school," Fluegel said. "Usually my husband gets them before I do, but we still haven't gotten anything about today."

Elizabeth Resnick, mother of a Williams student, was at lunch when she got a text from her daughter: “Mom, it’s me,” her 11-year-old wrote, using a friend’s Kindle device. “My throat is closing up, and my eyes are itching, and a lot of people are sick here.”

Resnick, the daughter of a Quad-City Times newsroom employee, drove to Williams and saw students being picked up by paramedics. She parked illegally and ran to find her daughter, Dakota Mathiason.

"She was being checked out by paramedics," Resnick said. "She was bright red, her eyes were red and watery, and she was wheezing."