Secret Service plan set to prevent school shootings
Mock-shooting drills. Metal detectors. Bulletproof classroom shelters.
As deadly school shootings continue to be a fixture in headlines and an everyday fear for districts and students, schools across the country have resorted to “hardening” their campuses.
But a federal report released last week backs another model that school safety experts have for years supported as a way to save lives: the formation of “threat assessment teams” that employ mental health, law enforcement and education professionals to help identify and support troubled youths.
The report, an eight-step guide prepared by the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, is one of the most explicit pieces of literature to come out of the Trump administration on how to prevent targeted attacks. It stems from decades of research showing that in a majority of school attacks, students knew of the perpetrators’ plans or had concerns about their behavior, said the center’s chief, Lina Alathari.
The guide encourages schools to not only build out reporting mechanisms like an online tip form, a dedicated hotline or even a smartphone app but also promote a positive campus climate so students can share concerns “without feeling ashamed or facing the stigma of being labeled a ‘snitch.’”
There is no one-size-fitsall descriptor for a student attacker, Alathari said, but there are certain things schools can be on alert for. When a student sees a disturbing post on social media by a classmate, for example, or a teacher sees a student suddenly withdrawing from schoolwork, those behaviors can be reported to a threat assessment team.
If it is a transient threat, something said out of anger without the weapons to act on it, it can be handled with informal counseling or light disciplinary action, such as a notice to parents, said Amanda Nickerson, the director of the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention at the University at Buffalo.
It is a system that has been successful since it was put in place in Los Angeles County in 2009, said Tony Beliz, who developed the School Threat Assessment Response Team there.
Work on the school safety blueprint comes as the national conversation over the role of the government in protecting students from violence continues to play out in federal hearings and on city streets. Alathari said the threat assessment center began compiling the guide after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead in February.
But threat assessment models have their limits. In the case of a high school shooting in southern Maryland in March, where a 17-year-old shot and killed one student and injured another at Great Mills High School, the principal, Jake Heibel, said there were “no signs” the gunman would attack.
“He was three months away from graduating,” Heibel said. “I pause on how to say this but, you got to follow up on everything. But can you follow up on everything?”