Transcript: Comprehensive School Safety Planning: Legislative Updates and Best Practices for School-Based Behavioral Threat Assessment

Laura Buckner:

Welcome to our webinar, Comprehensive School Safety Planning: Legislative Updates and Best Practices for School-Based Behavioral Threat Assessment. We’ve got a lot to talk about, and we’re really glad that you’re all here. Today’s webinar is presented by the California Department of Education and WestEd. And this session is intended for local education agencies receiving funding through the CDE’s Stronger Connections Grant and private school leaders eligible for equitable services under Title I. We also know that this is a topic of interest to many other folks throughout the state. And so if you’re not a grantee or a private school leader, but are here with us today, we welcome you and we hope you’ll gain something from our session today as well.

But very briefly, the Stronger Connections Grant program serves to increase the capacity of local education agencies to establish safer and healthier learning environments, prevent and respond to acts of violence and bullying or harassment, to address mental health needs, to develop safety assessments, corresponding plans and strategies, and to promote a positive school climate and culture. And WestEd is partnering with the CDE to provide some of the technical assistance services related to this grant.

I’m Laura Buckner with WestEd. I’ll be your cruise director for today. But the folks you’re really here to learn from are Tom and Curtis. So Tom Herman is an education administrator with the School Health and Safety Office in the Whole Child Division at the California Department of Education. He oversees state and federal programs related to health and safety, crisis response, school climate, restorative practices, harassment and bullying, and alcohol and other drug prevention. He is a former vice principal… I’m sorry, a former principal and vice principal. And Dr. Herman is committed to student academic success and the physical and emotional well-being of all students. So welcome, Dr. Herman.

And then we have Curtis Herring. He’s a school safety technical assistance specialist with the WestEd Justice and Prevention Research Center. He supports local, regional, and state education agencies in their implementation of evidence-based violence prevention, incident management projects such as developing campus mindfulness rooms and instituting school counseling, data collection, and analysis methods. So welcome, Curtis. We’re glad to have you here.

What to expect from today? We have 90 minutes together. And our goal is to share about some recent changes to California State legislation related to behavioral threat assessment as well as some practical evidence-based components of behavioral threat assessment. For the presentation portions of the webinar, while Tom and Curtis are speaking, we do ask you to stay muted. You can even turn your cameras off. This is primarily a presentation for the first part. So we’ll be engaging in discussion later on when we have breakouts. But for the presentation, you may type into the chat, and we’ve got a couple of staff sort of standing by to help with technical issues. You’ll see a few of us are named Zoom support. If you’re having any kind of technical trouble, please send a direct message to them. And we also have some folks from WestEd who are able to answer some of the content-related questions as well. And we’ll also be collecting your questions and determining the best way to respond to them likely via email after the webinar.

After the presentation portion, we’ll then move to breakout rooms and we’ll have some questions for everybody to discuss. We’ll also have a Padlet where we’d love for you to share about the work that you’re doing and any successful strategies you’re using or challenges you might be facing. And again, for the breakouts, please do plan on unmuting and then turning your cameras on if possible. And then we’ll have a group discussion after the breakouts, again, to continue sharing and learning from each other.

I also want to share that the session will be recorded and posted to the California Safe and Supportive Schools website. It’s just getting the portion that’s going to house these Stronger Connections webinars is just getting built today. And so that’ll be appearing on the site very soon. And since everyone today here registered, we have your email addresses and you’ll be notified once the recording is available.

And as a follow-up to this session, we will be hosting an office hour with our presenters, Curtis and Tom, next week. That’s February 6th from noon to 1:00 PM Pacific. That’s another time where if you want to join and ask questions or if you have some scenarios that you’d like to walk through, Curtis and Tom will be available. And everyone who’s here today will be receiving a calendar invitation to that session within the next 24 hours. So if you want to, you can mark your calendars now, and we’ll also be sending out the Zoom link to join that session in about a week.

So first of all, we’d like to know from you all, what is your level of familiarity with behavioral threat assessment? Are you new to this topic? Should we have asked you to present today? There should be a Zoom poll popping up in your Zoom window. And please just let us know by selecting your level of familiarity. And if, for any reason, you’re having trouble accessing the poll, you can also type that into the chat. That’s no problem. But I can see many of you are selecting your response. It looks like it’s sort of quieted down. So let’s give it maybe five more seconds. And, Colleen, can you share with us the results just so we can see where people land?

Great. So we have some folks who are really, really new to this. Not at all. Most people look to be in the somewhat/fair amount category. And just a very few people are very, very familiar or expert at this. So if you’re lucky enough to end up in a breakout session with somebody who marked very or expert, I encourage you to also draw on their wisdom because I’m sure they have a lot to share as well. We can close the poll. And now, I would like to welcome Tom Herman to get us started with some legislative updates and other information about comprehensive school safety planning. So, Tom, why don’t you take it away?

Tom Herman:

Great. Thank you so much, Laura. I want to thank WestEd for assisting us in putting this on. And also, I want to welcome again our Stronger Connections grantees and a special welcome to our private school leaders who have joined us. We know very well that private schools are not immune from the kinds of catastrophes and tragedies that can befall schools of all kinds. And so we’re happy that you’re here and eager to share with you information today.

I’m going to open with just a general sort of description of what a school safety plan is. I will start with that, thank you, and that schools have to be prepared to respond to emergencies. These emergencies can include natural or manmade hazards. And the plans strive to prevent violence and behavior issues that can undermine safety and security. And so plans have to be systemic and systematic. That is the safety plan itself must be a living document that is subject to change, that is coordinated around the individual cultures and climates of schools and even their physical locations at times. And so the kind of natural threats that they may face. And so these plans need to be practiced and they need to be collaborative in nature, both with law enforcement and first responders.

And going into the required components of education code. You’ll find all of this information in Education Code 32280 through 89. And so some of the required components are an assessment of school crime, child abuse reporting procedures, disaster procedures. And especially, I’d like to highlight this as something new really is that the disaster procedures have to have adaptations for students and staff with disabilities and special needs. These disabilities may be in sense of having 504 Plans or being on an IEP or other factors that can impede their ability to access emergency procedures. They also have to have, of course, earthquake emergency procedures and a procedure to allow a public agency to use school buildings, grounds, and equipment for mass care. And then policies around suspension/expulsion have to be part of the safety plan in addition to their discrimination and harassment policy.

And further required components have to do with the discipline policy, with procedures for notifying teachers of dangerous pupils. This sometimes is something that schools have questions about and is a necessary part of the school plans. Students who have formerly been expelled for various reasons, their teachers have a right to know that history. And, of course, physical sorts of procedures for safe ingress and egress. And then procedures to conduct tactical responses must be included as well. And then procedures to prepare for active shooter/assailant. And this is based on local needs and context.

And now we go to recommended components, which are we recommend and the legislature indeed recommends that these components be part of school safety plans, though they’re not in the Education Code section that expressly requires them. And these include, for example, guidelines for roles and responsibilities of mental health and community intervention professionals and school resource officers. So you’re responding to that question, what are their specific roles during an emergency? And then lockdown procedures or multi-option response procedures, how are these articulated and practiced? And that should be part of the school safety plan. And then procedures for sheltering in-place. There may be need for that if there’s emergency outside of the school locale. And it is safer at that moment not to release students, but to have them shelter in-place.

And also, policies and procedures related, of course, to bullying, including cyberbullying, and youth suicide prevention policy. Now, this is part of the… It’s recommended that that suicide prevention policy be part of the school safety plan. But whether it’s a part of the plan or not, just to note, youth suicide prevention policy is a requirement for schools, our grantees, certainly, but also all public schools.

And response to procedures for the release of toxic substance. This might depend on where your school is located. For example, near a place that’s known to create hazardous chemicals for various reasons or near railroad tracks. For example, where cargo is routinely hauled. That may be dangerous. And then procedures for the continuity of operations. That also is a recommended component.

We’ll go next. Thank you. And so to talk about important dates for the comprehensive school safety plans, the plans themselves need to be updated and adopted by March 1st of each year. So we have that first sort of requirement, the adoption by March 1st, and then they also need to be approved by school district or county officers of education. And that is dependent on who you answer to, so to speak. So if you are within a school district, individual school would turn that school safety plan into their district office. And in no case are school safety plans sent the Office of School-Based Health. Pardon me, the school Health and Safety Office. And so they’re not to be turned into our office, though I’m happy at any time to discuss your plans, but that is not a requirement that they be turned into us.

And equally, if you respond to a County Office of Education, then that’s where you would turn that plan into. And so we have that March 1st date, which is certain, and also certain date is October 15th. And by October 15th, if a school district or a County Office of Education has not received those plans, they are required to report that to the California Department of Education. They could be subject to a fine up to $2,000 for not having this done on time. And we rarely get those reports because, of course, if a school has not turned the safety plan to their district office, then that superintendent generally will get that school in line and get that plan adopted. And so same with the County Office of Education.

And so I want to go into a little bit of detail about the Senate Bill 906, which was adopted July 1st, 2023. And it adds sections 49390 to 49395 to the Education Code. And essentially, it requires the State Department of Education to develop model content that informs parents of California’s child access prevention laws and laws relating to the safe storage of firearms. So you may know some of you out there that you get a template from us, the California Department of Education, to send to parents informing them of the laws and the ethical obligations around storing firearms safely. And additionally, it requires school officials to report to law enforcement any threat or perceived threat. And it requires law enforcement to conduct an investigation and threat assessment. And so this gets rise to this whole topic of behavioral threat assessment and how it can be accomplished.

So we begin with a definition of this threat or perceived threat. And I put it sort of in its entirety because I think it’s important. We know that as a sort of continuum of adolescent behavior, if you will, that they may say things that are thoughtless or adolescents may be angry at someone and voice utterances that schools need to determine, “Is this a homicidal threat or not?” And so it may be a writing or action of a pupil that creates a reasonable suspicion that the pupil is preparing to commit a homicidal act. So think about that for a moment as you read that, “Is it reasonable that this pupil is preparing to commit such a homicidal act?”

And go ahead to the next. Thank you. And so this may include the possession, use, or depictions of firearms, ammunition, shootings, targets, and association with infliction of physical harm, destruction, or death and social media post, etc. And we’ve all read, those of us in administration and in school safety, about students who have expressed violent tendencies in their writings. At time, may be an essay to an English teacher. It may be doodles on their desk or whatever that look like that this person may be struggling with thoughts of harming themselves or others. And also, this is included in other media that they may see that others may inform the school of social media posts, etc. And it may also include a warning by a parent, pupil, or other individual.

And it further defines reasonable suspicion. We’ve just used that term. And so this suspicion means articulable facts together with rational inferences from those facts and warranting an objective suspicion. So this is a kind of circular definition. I think we can all struggle at times with what is a reasonable suspicion, but remember that it is a law that these homicidal threats be reported and that an investigation be made by law enforcement. And so ultimately, it’s something that you have to decide, “Is this a reasonable suspicion?” And then you report that.

And so with reporting and documenting the threat, so a school official who’s alerted or observes any threat or perceived threat, he or she must immediately report the threat or perceived threat to law enforcement. And so this report should include copies of any documentary or other evidence that you have associated threat so that they can get a better look at what they’re dealing with. And then this is part of the law enforcement requirement that they keep a record of any report received pursuant to this section.

And then to go on and then upon the notification described and the local law enforcement and the school site conduct an investigation. And sometimes these are parallel investigations. Sometimes they’re done together. If you have a school resource officer that’s part of the school site or one that you are in contact with or local law enforcement, let’s say you are a private school and you have contacts with local law enforcement, you would contact them and then they are required to conduct an investigation.

And so you can contact me at this email you’re seeing on the screen, the [email protected], and I’m happy to go over further details about this. And then also, we’ve posted some resources. You’ll be getting copies of this as well. And so at this time, I’d like to turn this over to Curtis Herring who’s going to talk more in best practices regarding behavioral threat assessments. Thank you.

Curtis Herring:

Hey. Thank you, Tom. I want to start just by apologizing if I coughed throughout the process. I’m overcoming some illness. And so I’m going to do the best I can to get through it without coughing too much, but I do apologize. So my plan today is to talk about behavioral threat assessment and best practices and start with a somewhat high-level overview as the poll showed. I know there’s some people who have very little experience with behavioral threat assessment, but I also want to jump into a few specific areas where we could talk about best practices around implementing behavioral threat assessment in schools. And so with that being said, we’ll jump into my first slide here. Thank you.

So just talking about what behavioral threat assessment and management is, and you’ll hear me refer to it as BTA, behavioral threat assessment or behavioral threat assessment and management. The adding that management or stressing that management portion is something that’s starting to pick up within the industry. It’s always been a component, but now it’s being stressed somewhat in the name. So those are the same thing as I speak today about them. So at its core, it’s a proactive approach to targeted violence prevention. And we’re going to talk about different models as you can see below on that slide. But no matter what model for behavioral threat assessment you may be utilizing, they all have a basic process that is the same. The first step is to identify concerning behavior or persons of concern, so individuals that are demonstrating concerning threatening behavior. And then the second step is to inquire more about that and make an assessment.

Sometimes you see just the assessment step there. Sometimes you see inquire and then assess. And basically, it’s a series of questioning and assessing. It may be interviews, it may be looking at old records, and then making an assessment around whether or not that individual poses a threat. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that a bit later. And it finalizes with a management plan. So a way to manage the threatening behavior or to determine that management isn’t necessary. Many times you’ll run a threat assessment, as Tom mentioned, and the students don’t necessarily intend to carry out a threat. And so you’re able to use a threat assessment process to come to that determination and then make a decision not to move forward with a management plan.

Now, there’s, again, various evidence and research-based behavioral threat assessment models in existence, some that you may have heard of. These are probably the big three. One is the National Threat Assessment Center model and process for developing behavioral threat assessment teams in schools as well as within the community and law enforcement units. And we’ll talk more about that as well. Another one that’s been further operationalized for the school setting is the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines or CSTAG. And then a third option is the Salem-Keizer Cascade model. There’s other models out there as well, but these, again, are probably the three big ones, and they take this process of identifying, inquiring, and managing and further operationalize that and help you to create systems in your schools where you can run these processes successfully.

So why should you be interested in behavioral threat assessment management? The goal at its core of threat assessment is to identify students of concern, assess their risk for engaging in violence or harmful activities, and identify intervention strategies to manage that risk. Again, you see those three steps, identifying, assessing, and then managing the risk. And just to set the stage before going into each of these bullet points, when you’re not using behavioral threat assessment as a process to assess threats and manage threats in your schools, a lot of times you’re going to be responding, potentially putting a lot of that burden on one person. It may be just an administrator who’s conducting a disciplinary investigation and threats are just sort of lumped into the normal process, maybe missing a lot of valuable information and opportunities for intervention when you handle them that way.

And so one of the most important pieces about behavioral threat assessment is that it is evidence-based, both looking at the development of the process through research and then also the outcomes of the process through research. And there’s a lot of information about that depending on which model you might want to adopt. But there is evidence, lots of research to support the process. And it’s also systematic. And that’s important especially when you’re trying to apply behavioral threat assessment across multiple campuses within a school district. It’s also important case to case. You want to treat every threat the same way and have a process for working through those. Now, that doesn’t mean the outcome is going to be the same, but you want the process where you assess the situation and determine how to manage the situation to be the same regardless of who made the threat, how old the student was, and all of those things.

So having a systematic approach to investigating threats and resolving them is critical. It involves multiple perspectives as we’ll talk about here in just a moment. It’s bringing multiple people to the table from different areas within education to really try to come up with a holistic approach to working with the student in the situation. It promotes a prevention mindset. It’s an alternative to zero-tolerance policies where a threat is made and there is no differentiation between someone who intended or has the capacity to carry out the threat and someone who does not. It also focuses on a root cause, really trying to understand what’s going on in that individual’s life, what’s led to the situation that’s occurring now, and then structuring interventions around that information versus, again, a one-size-fits-all type zero-tolerance policy or something to that effect.

And it distinguishes first and foremost between those who make threats and those who actually pose threats. And so you have individuals who might make a threat and do not pose a threat. They might make threats and they do pose threats. And then you also have students who pose a threat and might not ever make a threat. And behavioral threat assessment allows you to analyze each of those situations and then come up with a management plan that best suits the situation.

So talking a little bit more about who should be involved in a behavioral threat assessment and management. Again, I mentioned that it brings multiple perspectives to the table, and that is through the multidisciplinary team approach that behavioral threat assessment utilizes. In a school setting, you’re usually going to have three core members who make up that team, and then other members that may join depending on the situation or the student or even just the staffing and the resources that are available to the school. So the school administrator’s role is typically one of leadership on the BTA team, coordinating meetings, calling the team together, all of those sorts of things.

The school-based mental health professional oftentimes is a school counselor, a social worker, sometimes a licensed professional counselor working in the schools, even a school psychologist. Again, a lot of times this is going to depend on the staffing at the school and the resources that are available. Some bring multiple mental health professionals to the table. Others are limited there, and they bring who they have.

And then a school resource officer or local law enforcement is sort of that third core member that you really want to have on your team. And this is where if you are running behavioral threat assessment and you have this team already established and you have a good relationship with local law enforcement or you’re lucky enough to have an SRO who serves your campus and is always available, you’re able to meet that legislative requirement of notifying law enforcement early on in this first step of convening your team. Law enforcement’s going to be there along the way. And so you’re able to satisfy that requirement just through the act of getting your team up and going and mobilized to assess the threat.

And then the other category includes parents, guardians, nurses, hall monitors, security guards, teachers. The list can go on and on depending, again, on resources, depending on the student. You may even bring certain members in to a threat assessment. Sometimes just on the backend, on the management portion, when you’re putting together a management plan, you may bring some additional people in at that phase as well even if they’re not involved in the assessment portion.

Next slide. So I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about the role of law enforcement in behavioral threat assessment within schools in light of the legislative updates that were shared earlier. And this is something that I see done a lot of different ways around the country. But the most ideal situation is that you have law enforcement serving as a member on your BTA team. And again, that can come from local law enforcement connections or that can come from an SRO. But having them serve on your team brings a lot of additional resources, skills, and perspective to the entire process. For example, they may be able to tell you things that are going on with extended family members of a student due to house calls they’ve made. They may know about the home environment of the student if they’ve made multiple house calls out there in the past. And so they’re able to help put some of the puzzle pieces together when you’re conducting your assessment and trying to sort out that question of whether or not the student really does pose a threat.

And there will be times when the need arises for a separate, but parallel and coordinated investigation between law enforcement and the behavioral threat assessment. So a couple of things I see here that I just want to point out. Oftentimes, I’ll see school-based behavioral threat assessment teams refer to law enforcement at certain thresholds and then allow law enforcement to make a determination of whether or not a criminal investigation or law enforcement investigation needs to continue. And then based on that decision, the school-based team will stop their behavioral threat assessment.

And I want to stress that behavioral threat assessment doesn’t require the involvement or the active investigation from law enforcement because that’s not the end goal for behavioral threat assessment in schools. And so it’s important to keep that investigation or that assessment alive and going even if law enforcement doesn’t feel that it’s risen to the level where they need to run their own investigation. And if you have a law enforcement officer, SRO, involved in your BTA team, that’s one of those delicate type roles you’re going to need to establish, “When are we picking that up? When are we not?” And oftentimes, that may come up later on in an investigation when the BTA team realizes that there’s some additional information they uncover and they need to consider whether or not a law enforcement investigation is needed again. And so this may be sort of an on/off thing as it continues. But you should be having good working relationships with law enforcement and coordinating those investigations as much as possible in the school setting to really work together and pull resources.

And then the last way that a law enforcement officer or SRO may serve the BTA team is actually through threat management. Oftentimes, they make great mentors for students who may have challenging situations. In my work, many times, we would actually assign our SRO as a mentor to a student who was a subject of threat assessment, and that had great results many times. And so you want them involved and you want the right person on the BTA team. I think that’s also critical when you’re working with law enforcement. You want to identify individuals that are going to be cooperative and give you what you need there.

A couple of additional options. NTAC has recently put out guidance, and it’s actually available on their website, which I’ll share a link here in a little bit. But they’re actually giving guidance that local law enforcement agencies and state law enforcement agencies should also now be creating behavioral threat assessment units. This is going to obviously happen at different paces depending on the situation. But you may have your local law enforcement working to establish BTA units or they already have a BTA unit within their organization.

If you’re reaching out and just trying to forge that relationship for the first time, it’d be a great question to ask when you call the local agencies or try to get connected to them to figure out if they’ve already got a group of law enforcement officers who have received additional behavioral threat assessment training and work as a unit. It even recommends that they reach out and consider adding people to their behavioral threat assessment teams from the community like school liaisons or people who are trained in behavioral threat assessment from the schools. And so there’s a lot of opportunity for collaboration there as knowledge of behavioral threat assessment continues to move forward.

And then lastly, I wanted to mention partnerships with fusion centers. I don’t necessarily think that that would be in line with the legislative requirement of notifying local law enforcement. However, I did most of my early work in Texas. And as a district administrator, we formulated a great relationship with our local fusion center and they were able to connect us to a lot of additional resources on highly concerning cases. We also ended up creating a system where as we had students, graduate, who had a lot of threatening behavior that we might be concerned about, we were able to transfer some of that information over to them as they moved into the community and out of the school system. And so partnerships with fusion centers is also just something that you may look at establishing if you haven’t done so.

I do want to talk also about threat management because this is really where the purpose of behavioral threat assessment lives. And so we can run an assessment all day long. The whole purpose and reason for that is to then use the information we identify to create a strong threat management plan. Threat management is about diverting the direction of interest, about diminishing dangerous and concerning behaviors, increasing protective factors, and altering the trajectory towards violence. So one of the things I see a lot in schools is a hyper focus on the subject. And we definitely want to be providing intervention around the subject and support the subject of the BTA being the person who’s showing the concerning behavior.

But to have a truly comprehensive plan, we also need to be looking at interventions that might help the potential targets, the situation itself, as well as the setting. And so when we consider all of those factors and we apply interventions strategically based on what we’ve learned through the assessment phase, we can come up with a pretty comprehensive plan that, again, doesn’t just focus on the person of concern or the subject of the behavioral threat assessment.

I really like to highlight the idea of increasing protective factors when thinking about the plans. Oftentimes, we focus on the disciplinary consequences or maybe even legal consequences of a threat assessment. And while those things may still happen, if codes of conduct are violated and things like that, it’s very important to remember that, again, the purpose of behavioral threat assessment is more than just disciplining. It’s about increasing these protective factors and altering trajectory towards violence. And so that could be accumulation of a lot of small things over time when we think about this sort of thing.

So, for example, subjects, the two probably biggest interventions that I see utilized are referrals out to counseling and suspensions, which don’t always necessarily help. And so really thinking about things all the way down to basic needs, “Are the student’s basic needs being met? Is there stressors in their life that the school might be able to help mitigate through various programs? And can we start with even some of those simple things to, again, increase the protective factors going on in the student’s life?” So we want to be identifying those things throughout the assessment phase so that we can hopefully bridge the gap there.

And then when we look at potential targets, it may be things as simple as altering a path to class. If we know that two individuals, one person is targeting another, and they cross paths every day in the hallway in the same place, we might talk to a potential target about altering the direction that they’re walking to the cafeteria so that that intersection doesn’t occur. Parking lot escorts and things like that, as well as social media training, talking to them about how to deal with social media to not make the problem worse once we’ve become aware that they may be a potential target for violence.

Situation includes things. A lot of times, this is so basic, but it’s missed. Oftentimes, you can identify some sort of original grievance in a lot of these situations that started the student down the pathway toward violence. And many times, we miss that. And if we can identify what that original grievance is, we might be able to resolve that through conflict resolution and some really basic strategies. We also want to look at precipitating events here, things that might be coming up in the person’s life that would either enhance protective factors and maybe we can try to help make sure those things occur or things that might cause more stress and potentially increase the likelihood that a threat would be carried out.

And then setting, we can look at things like transportation methods. We can look at the actual educational setting itself. We can look at schedule changes that would potentially change not the education setting, but the individual setting of that student. So, for instance, if they’re in class with students that they’re threatening, is it possible to change a schedule and get a setting change that, again, just diminishes the likelihood of that occurring and hopefully alters the trajectory?

Now, I want to highlight here that progress monitoring is just as important as the original plan design. If you aren’t monitoring progress, you don’t know if the plan is working, as adults, as the BTA team who put the plan together, we might think it’s got all the right things. But if it isn’t achieving the goals listed above there in that sentence about threat management, then it isn’t a good plan and it isn’t working. And so we need to be monitoring progress through a system of just reviewing and adjusting. Oftentimes, this can be a really challenging concept, but I personally like to get some baseline information when the behavioral threat assessment is first completed. That might include things like grades, attendance, discipline, number of referrals over a certain period of time, getting an understanding of what does it normally look like in this student’s day, and really try, from that point forward, to see how we’re progressing in performance areas like that.

You can also measure perception changes just by asking the students some scaling questions and talking to them. They’re having these interventions taking place. You can ask them if it’s working. If you’ve assigned a mentor, are they bonding with the mentor? Do they feel like that’s a productive thing for them? Maybe they need a different mentor or they need increased time or decreased time. And so you want to just keep tabs on how the plan is actually working and not be afraid to go back, revisit it, update it, and change it.

Now, another important thing here is to think about how this data can be used. And I don’t mean the data from an individual student’s threat assessment. I mean, as a school system, looking at trends, identifying, “Are there specific times of year where we’re seeing upticks in threats?” From my experience, there usually are. And also looking at areas such as maybe I notice I have a lot of threats going from fifth grade to sixth grade. I don’t have a lot of threatening behavior. I’m not running a lot of threat assessments. And then all of a sudden I hit sixth grade and we have a huge uptick in this behavior. Maybe we could design a school counseling guidance lesson where we go in and we talk about some of these behaviors on that bridge from fifth to sixth grade and reduce the unnecessary threat assessments that we might be running just through some basic interventions like that.

So looking to develop tier one and tier two intervention strategies to reduce occurrences of threats is critical and it will promote a safer school climate. It will also help you identify a potential training needs. And here, this is from personal experience. The district that I worked in, we pulled data and we realized that there were some specific special education settings where we were getting a lot of verbal threats that were all turning out to be transient or low level threats as far as whether the students really posed a threat. But we identified a need for some deescalation training in those rooms with those teachers to help them have strategies to reduce the situation and calm the situation prior to it reaching the point of threats of violence. And through intervening there, we were able to impact those numbers and decrease the incidents. And so just understanding that this does fit into your other systems, this does feed back to tier one and tier two interventions, or it should if you’re following best practices.

And lastly, I just wanted to leave you with a few helpful links. As I was preparing for this session today, I did want to link the information for the California fusion centers, also, a link to making prevention a reality. This is a FBI document that does a really good job of going into detail about how to run threat assessments, how to create management plans. And so it’s been a very helpful resource for me. Hopefully, it could be for you as well if you’re not familiar with it. There’s a NTAC website. This, again, houses a lot of the research around reducing targeted violence. And they also have that document I was referring to for state and local law enforcement agencies, encouraging them to create behavioral threat assessment units. And it walks them through how to do that.

And the last one was just a local resource. I identified a Safe Schools Toolkit governance brief that I thought was really good. And it walks through, again, the high level why behavioral threat assessment? How do you do it? And how does it align with California law?

And so that brings my portion to an end. There’s plenty more around threat assessment that we could discuss. I just wanted to hit a few high points for today’s session. And again, if you do have detailed questions, I’ll be available in the office hour that was previously mentioned. So look forward to hearing from some of you there. And that’s all I’ve got. I appreciate your time today.