BETHEL – For the second time in a week, students and staff in the Telstar Middle/High School were evacuated Thursday after a bomb threat was found in a high school boys’ bathroom.

“There was a vague reference to it,” said Superintendent David Murphy of the note, which he said did not give specifics about a bomb being in a certain place at a certain time, but was clear enough that action to remove everyone from the building was deemed the safest thing to do.

After evacuating the school shortly before 1 p.m, police Chief Alan Carr said state troopers, two dogs, himself and an Oxford County deputy sheriff scoured the building for two and one-half hours. The incident is under investigation, but Carr said he believes the bomb threat was made by a different individual than Monday’s incident.

On Monday, the bomb threat was found in one of the middle school boys’ bathrooms.

Students were again immediately evacuated from the school. Within 15 minutes parents had been notified of the situation through the school’s instant messaging system.

“It was simply a precautionary measure,” said Murphy of the move to bus middle school students to the Crescent Park Elementary School and the high school students to Gould Academy, where Head of School Dan Kunkle said a standing agreement provides the field house for high school students in such a situation.

“We err on the side of caution. But it upsets the flow of things,” said Murphy of the need to evacuate and disrupt classes.

Murphy said students have been receptive at two assemblies the staff has held to discuss the situation.

Murphy said the last bomb threats were about six years ago. At that time, the school purchased a metal detector to put to use on a temporary basis. That detector has not been used since and there are no plans to use it at this point, he said. The detector is lent out to schools across the state when needed, Murphy said.

None of the bathrooms is locked, but students must sign in and out if they are going to a bathroom from a classroom.

“We’ve been trying to address this aggressively. We’ve had assemblies with students on how to act appropriately and there have been staff meetings to debrief them. In both cases, students were very responsive,” Murphy said.