Taking threats seriously is foundational, according to John McDonald, chief operating officer of the Missouri School Boards’ Association’s Center for Education Safety. That’s been his message to hundreds of Missouri school employees who have completed the center’s threat assessment training.
The teachings are designed to help them detect and assess early warning signs of potential violence.
“The words people use matter,” said McDonald. “The actions that they’re engaged in matter. The threats that they make, well you better believe it, because if you don’t, then, you know, you’re going to look back and say, ‘Oh, I never thought it could happen here.’ And if you’re living in ‘I didn’t think it could happen here in 2024,’ shame on you.”
McDonald told Missourinet that providing threat assessment training helps the employees determine the credibility and seriousness of a potential threat.
“If you say you’re going to kill me, if you say you’re going to blow me up, if you say you’re going to bring a gun to school, I believe you. And it is really foundational that we believe the threat,” says McDonald. “We can’t be that school, we can’t be that district, we can’t be that educator that doesn’t take a threat seriously. Our kids deserve better than that. To identify a threat early means prevention, instead of having to respond to something. If we’re responding, we’ve already failed because we didn’t prevent,” said McDonald.
He said when kids feel safe, higher test scores and better graduation rates happen.
The structure of the threat assessment system is made up of specific questions to determine if the student is a risk to others or themselves.
“If you knew about a threat and you didn’t follow through with the threat assessment, something happened, the liability is just through the roof right now. It’s always easier to justify to our community, to our stakeholders, what we’ve done, than to try to justify what we didn’t do,” said McDonald.
A threat assessment team could be there to help the student get the help that they need. The team effort could consist of administrators, counselors, school resource officers, parents, doctors, and mental health professionals.
“A lot of times, when we do threat assessments, we have parents that tell us, ‘We didn’t know where else to turn. We didn’t know what to do.’ Well, sometimes that threat assessment group can be that help and support that provides that guidance to families and gets a student in a much better place,” he said.
According to McDonald, most potential safety threats are quickly resolved because someone reports the situation.
“We are all detectors, and we can all be disruptors. And you know, see something say something is a real need if you want to protect those around you,” he said.
McDonald said the goal is not to put the student in jail or charge them. He said that’s the last resort.
“The goal is to really assess and provide supports, wrap around supports for that kiddo, so that they can become successful. Because if they’re successful, then everybody’s safer,” said McDonald.
Critics of threat assessments said the safety measure contributes to the school to prison pipeline.
“What people have to understand is that we’re not pulling a name out of a hat, saying we’re going to bring you in for a threat assessment because, you know, you look a certain way. We’re bringing you in to do a threat assessment because your actions constituted a threat,” he said.
McDonald touts Missouri’s Courage2Report tool – an annonymous way for students to report a threat.
For more information about MSBA’s and CES’s threat assessment training, click here.
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