Board seeks consultant for behavioral threat assessment, sets April safety forum
A day after student walkouts across the country to protest gun violence in schools, the North Penn School Board moved to get professional help to find gaps in the district’s systems.
The board voted unanimously Thursday night to issue a request for proposals to hire an expert in behavioral threat assessment, a move board member Jonathan Kassa said could make a big difference.
“What this means is connecting the dots, which may be disconnected or part of various
silos, across such a large system as we have in the district, so that we’re able to discover students which may be of concern,” Kassa said.
“It’s not that they’re a problem, but to understand how we can help them, maybe with mental health and wellness, or in the very rare instance of being able to prevent an incident,” he said.
School safety and security has been a topic of national discussion since the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and hundreds of North Penn High School students took part in a walkout on Wednesday morning timed to mark one month since that shooting.
The board’s safe schools committee, of which Kassa is chairman, met Monday night to discuss safety and security topics, and Kassa said the topic of behavioral threat assessment has been on that committee’s radar since December, based on recommendations from Chris Doerr, the district’s Coordinator of Emergency Management and Safe Schools, and Director of Facilities and Operations Scott Kennedy.
“Chris and Mr. Kennedy had brought it up as one of the top priorities, and the committee, even then, it was something we saw coming. We’re just accelerating the process that was already in place,” Kassa said.
According to Kassa and Doerr, behavioral threat assessment was developed by the U.S. Secret Service in the 1950s, and has been encouraged by the federal Department of Education since the aftermath of the shooting at Columbine High School in April 1999. According to behavioral threat assessment studies, there is no standard profile of a school attacker, but most attackers do engage in behavior prior to an attack that raises concerns, have had a significant loss or personal failure, feel bullied or persecuted by others, and have access to or use weapons before an attack.
The goal of applying behavioral threat assessment is to develop a trained multi-disciplinary team that can identify students who may be of concern, do inquiries, assess and manage that person and their issues, and create a safer environment by encouraging more reporting of potential problems and increasing the availability of mental health resources.
“The key to behavioral threat assessment is having regular meetings, with a multi-disciplinary team, that is trained to deal with the concerns brought to it,” said Kassa.
“This isn’t about profiling. This is about dealing with issues that we hear from all types of sources, across the district, and maybe we’ll add things like anonymous reporting, or more receptors to get information,” he said.
During the safe schools committee meeting Monday night, Doerr recommended that committee ask the full board to bring on board a consultant for one year to help the district develop its own behavioral threat assessment program, by assessing what’s already in place, surveying for current opinions and needs, and identifying where training staff could be necessary.
“There will also be some components of school climate and confidential reporting that will be studied as we explore a holistic approach to violence prevention,” Doerr said.
Kassa added that the tactics behind behavioral threat assessment are “in many ways, what school districts typically already do, but we want to make sure that it’s a more methodical, consistent approach.”
“For all we know, the district already does a good job, but perhaps there are gaps. It is a constantly evolving practice, worldwide, where best practices are being developed, and we want to make sure we’re on that curve,” he said.
District staff have already been in contact with Virginia-based Sigma Threat Management Associates for background on various programs that company offers, according to Kassa, and the request for proposals would seek terms from companies
across the country to help North Penn develop its own systems and tactics.
“You don’t want to have people arbitrarily making decisions. You want to go through this, as experts, and decide what you want to further investigate, what actions need to be taken,” said Kassa.
“Do the police need to be involved? We want the police to be part of (the multidisciplinary team) as well. The experts will help us define that,” he said.
The safe schools committee has also scheduled a public forum for local residents and students to voice their concerns, which is tentatively scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on April 11 at North
Penn High School. That forum will be the day after the next safe schools committee meeting, scheduled for 6 p.m. on April 10 at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock St.
“The really granular work gets done at the Safe Schools committee. That’s our opportunity for people to bring things up, and for us to churn it,” Kassa said.
“The community forum is to deal with the big picture, and strategy, but it also lets us hear people’s anxieties, lets us hear their questions. We’ll probably be able to answer some of them, and make them feel better, but in other respects we need to learn what we don’t know, so we can address it,” he said.
Kassa described the Monday safe schools committee meeting during his report
at the start of the school board’s meeting Thursday night, then made a motion for the board to seek an outside expert during the “other business” portion of the meeting. Before the vote, resident Bill Patchell questioned the need for a formal behavioral threat assessment program, and said he was worried that students could be classified as threats accidentally or based on pranks.
“I don’t want to see people that are innocent get wrapped up in this, and it go way out of control,” he said.
Kassa answered that those concerns are exactly why the committee wants feedback, and a professional on board.
“Which is why we’re bringing in experts: to make sure that due process, and the right checks and balances, are put in place by
the district, so the exact situations that you described do not occur,” he said.
Other topics discussed by the safe schools committee included the district’s emergency response team, public address systems in each district school, and whether those PA systems could be consolidated into a unified announcement system across the district. The committee also now has a student liaison whom Kassa said will be a “valuable conduit” to share student concerns with the committee, and he added that input from students is “absolutely” welcome and encouraged.
The safe schools committee next meets at 6 p.m. on April 10 at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock St. For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.NPenn.org.