School Threat Assessment Teams Revisited
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9 responses to “School Threat Assessment Teams Revisited”
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Capt. how do you think we’ll modify the law now its past crossover day? Are we going to be able to get away with rewriting the guidelines?
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Modifying the law will have to wait until next year. DCJS will have to decide what they can do in the meantime.
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Good backgrounder.
Thus if I understand, the general concept of what Fairfax FCPS was trying to propose is within Va. guidelines, but the devil is in the details. I wonder if the counties also have a threat assessment teams for non-school overall threats, and I wonder what other states do that might serve as a template. -
This article seems to end a bit abruptly. The last paragraph starts with a “First,” but there is no “Second,”, “Third,”, etc.
Is part of it missing?
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Fixed. Thanks.
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I am pretty sure that Donna Michaelis was at DCJS when this legislation was enacted. If so, I assume that she provided a good deal of background.
This section was enacted in 2013 when concern over school shootings and safety was new. The legislative history is interesting.
Sec. 22.1-79.4 was first proposed in bill (HB 2344), which was introduced in the 2013 General Assembly by Del. Mark Cole (R-Spotsylvania). The original bill referred to “individuals” who may constitute a threat. The bill did not get through without considerable scrutiny. There were several substitutes and floor amendments. One floor amendment in the House that was adopted changed “individuals” to “students”. The House passed the bill with a vote of 78-19. It was agreed to unanimously in the Senate.
There were several amendments to the section in the 2016 session. Del. Jimmie Massie (R-Henrico) was the bill’s patron. One of the changes was the substitution of “individual” for “student”. The ostensible purpose of the bill was to have the section on threat assessment teams in K-12 mirror the provisions of the statute relating to threat assessment teams in higher education institutions.
On a personal note, I was assigned to write the fiscal impact statement on the bill. Just like Mr. Sherlock, I was alarmed at the proposed scope of the legislation. It is not the purpose of a fiscal impact statement to comment on the substance of a bill or to express support or opposition to the bill. However, preparing the fiscal impact statement, I went to some lengths to spell out how the scope of the statute was being broadened. It did not make any difference; the bill was passed unanimously by both houses. Here is the fiscal impact statement: https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?161+oth+HB1013F122+PDF
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Thanks, Dick. Donna was in fact there at the beginning and shared a lot. I have communicated this column to her and to the new ream at VDOE. I honestly think the flaws are too obvious and the fixes too straightforward to ignore. Hard to imagine an organized opposition.
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It is not hard for me to imagine an organized opposition. There is a national group, Moms Demand Action that has chapters in Virginia. The group is focused on guns in schools, of which there has been an uptick recently. They are likely to see any attempt to reduce the scope or authority of threat assessment teams as a threat to school safety. I would not be surprised if the Youngkin administration would be reluctant to pursue the changes you advocate. It could open itself up to charges that it is attempting to diminish school safety, which fly directly into the face of the governor’s call for more SROs.
The statute requires schools to report data from their threat assessment team activities to DCJS annually. There is a lot of data involved. It is included in the agency’s annual Virginia School and Division Safety Survey Results report. Here is the link to the latest report if you have not seen it: https://www.dcjs.virginia.gov/sites/dcjs.virginia.gov/files/2020_virginia_school_and_division_safety_survey_results.pdf
There was a lot more activity and assessments than I had expected. (Suicide threats are also included in the assessments.) The good news, as far as our worries are concerned, is that about 98 percent of the threat assessments involved students in the school itself. Only a very few involved parents or “others”. By the way, according to the report, numerous schools and divisions monitor social media. So, your ire should not be confined to Fairfax County Public Schools.
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Thanks, Dick. Donna was in fact there at the beginning and shared a lot. I have communicated this column to her and to the new ream at VDOE. I honestly think the flaws are too obvious and the fixes too straightforward to ignore. Hard to imagine an organized opposition.
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