(CNN) — The United States’ two biggest school districts get the same threat.

One — in Los Angeles — decides to call off school, with the superintendent saying students won’t go back until he’s absolutely sure everything is safe.

The other — in New York — decides just the opposite, dismissing the threat as an apparent “hoax”

So which one did the right thing?

There’s no easy answer. It depends partly on timing, given that Los Angeles authorities acted just before classes began on Tuesday, while the New Yorkers’ comments didn’t come until midday. And location matters, given that Los Angeles is just 60 miles from San Bernardino, where 14 people died about two weeks ago in what authorities called a terrorist attack.

So, too, does the perspective of individual students and parents — some of whom might think calling off class is an overreaction, while others think doing anything other than that would be irresponsible.

L.A. superintendent: I won’t ‘take the chance’ with students’ lives

While New Yorkers started their school days earlier, the first word of anything awry came from Southern California around 7:15 a.m. PT (10:15 a.m. ET). By that time, classes hadn’t started yet, though some schools were already opened.

A school official received an “electronic threat” earlier that morning, a “message” that referenced many, unnamed schools and “talked about backpacks (and) other packages,” Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines explained.

School district spokeswoman Shannon Haber later said that an email sent overnight directly to a school board member had originated in Frankfurt, Germany.

Cortines noted that his school district, which is the country’s second largest with about 650,000 K-12 students, gets threats all the time. But, addressing reporters alongside the head of his school district’s police department and an official from the Los Angeles police, Cortines described this latest one as “rare” — in part because of what’s happened recently in San Bernardino and internationally.

“I, as superintendent, am not going to take the chance with the life of students,” he said.

New York: ‘Huge disservice … to close down our school system’

A superintendent in New York’s school system got an email “almost exactly the same as received in … Los Angeles,” New York police Commissioner Bill Bratton said.

Yet in New York, America’s biggest school district, students weren’t sent home. That’s because authorities looking at the same information believe it is a “hoax,” said the commissioner.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that we must continue to keep our school system open,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “(It is) very important not to overreact to situations like this.”

Those comments, and Bratton’s remarks, seem to suggest that New York authorities believe that’s exactly what happened in Los Angeles.

The New York mayor characterized the email threat as “so generic (and) so outlandish.”

“There were wording choices and other indicators that suggested a hoax and not anything we could associate with jihadist activity,” de Blasio said. “So (we decided) it would be a huge disservice … to close down our school system.”

CNN’s Kyung Lah contributed to this report.