Provincial police have yet to disclose why a secondary school and two elementary schools north of the city were secured Thursday afternoon.

Sydenham High School was locked down just after 1 p.m. Thursday, while nearby Loughborough Public School was place in “hold and secure” mode.

Yarker Public School down the road was also placed on “hold and secure” mode shortly after, according to the Limestone District School Board.

The security measures were implemented after OPP had notified the schools that there was a “potential threat external,” according to an LDSB-issued statement.

OPP spokesperson Kristine Rae would only say, by email, that an incident in Yarker, to which officers of its Napanee detachment responded, prompted the school alerts and that no charges were laid. She didn’t specify if it was one or more people involved in the incident.

The schools were locked down as a precaution, Rae wrote.

The emergency measures were in effect until just before 2:30 p.m. About a half-dozen OPP officers were on the scene securing the school and the surrounding area.

Rachel Meulenbrooks, a Grade 12 student, was in the back parking lot of the school when a staff member told her about the lockdown. She was first told to leave the school grounds, then to get back inside the school.

“We all ran up into the music room and that was the closest door we could find to get back in,” Meulenbrooks said.

As for what prompted the lockdown, she said she had “heard some things, but no one really knows for sure.”

After the lockdown ended, Sydenham students filed onto awaiting school buses from the school’s side door.

Those students who didn’t board a bus were greeted by anxious parents, whose cars lined both sides of Rutledge Road.

Rhonda Babcook was one of those parents. She lives nearby, so she hurried over to the school upon hearing about the lockdown.

“The police were here,” said Babcook, who kept other students’ parents updated. “You couldn’t get your kids out or go in, which is good. Everything was locked down.”

School staff, she said, “did an amazing job keeping our kids safe.”

According to the Limestone District School Board, when a school is locked down, as Sydenham High School was, students and staff are locked in the classrooms they’re in at the time, while no one is allowed in or out of the school.

When a school is placed in “hold and secure” mode, the school is locked but normal activities continue.