School Emergency Preparedness Beat Intro Voiceover 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Interview Cindy Pappas 00:08 Hello and welcome. My name is Cindy Pappas, and on behalf of the COPS Office I’d like to thank you for joining us for the first in a series of five podcasts on the issues surrounding school safety, the role of police in schools, and the importance of community coordination in the early identification and referral of children who have been victims of or witnesses to violence, as well as children with emotional or behavioral health needs. Joining us today is Gregory Thomas, former Executive Director of the Office of School Safety and Planning with the New York City Department of Education, the largest school district in the United States. He’s here to talk to us about emergency preparedness in a school setting. Welcome Mr. Thomas. Gregory 00:47 Yes, good afternoon. How are you today? Cindy 00:49 Very well, thank you. You have assisted communities and schools around the nation in the assessment and the improvement on their current levels of emergency preparedness. What would you say is the most important factor for schools to consider when developing their safety plans? Gregory 01:04 I think the first thing that schools should recognize is that they’re not built for disasters or for violence prevention; they are built for teaching and learning and their foundations has to start there. They have to make sure when they’re making their plans current and comprehensive that they use the resources that are in their local community to help them get that done. As relates to law enforcement, it’s very important as well to have them involved because much of what you will go through relates to issues of safety, might relate to fights or things like that that may happen in your school or around your school. When you’re developing your plan it’s important to have everybody involved in the process. Cindy 01:43 So law enforcement should definitely play an important role in developing those safety plans. Who else should be a part of that planning committee or those planning teams? Gregory 01:52 Well the group of people I refer to as stakeholders for sure include the staff in the building and, depending on the age of the student population, the students as well. This is really important at the middle school and high school levels where students need to be a part of the planning process so they can tell you what’s happening in the school and around the school. That also extends to their parents as well. Many times when meetings are called regarding safety concerns in the building, or to have a planning meeting with parents, parents very rarely show up in large numbers. It’s important that parents are involved in the process as well. Cindy 02:30 You are currently an associate with Margolis, Healy, and Associates, a COPS Office grantee who developed and implemented a campus behavioral threat assessment training program. Can you talk briefly about the role behavioral threat assessments can play in identifying and managing a potentially violent student in a school setting? Gregory 02:49 Well the whole threat assessment model is based on research that comes from a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education and the United States Secret Service looking at targeted violence at schools. Again, the words “targeted violence at schools” does not extend to any violence that occurs outside the school that is a result of a common fight or dispute that happens among students to and from school. It’s related to the instance where a student has chosen a school as a location to exact revenge because of some reason that they believe is affecting their well-being. If they were bullied or stigmatized within the school setting, they chose to use the school as their place against to exact their revenge. The whole behavioral threat assessment process relates to the ability for staff and school to look at students’ behaviors, not as a profile but at warning signs that may lead one to believe that a person needs more help or more intervention before they engage in an act of violence. Cindy 03:52 A behavioral threat assessment team, is it typically made up of people across systems? What would be a standard, if there is one, for those that would be involved in a behavioral threat assessment team? Gregory 04:04 The team itself has to be one that’s comprised of a multi-faceted list of people. That’s important because it’s really led by the school itself. The school administration has to be the one to gather the team. For law enforcement to do it doesn’t send the right message. Law enforcement has got to be a part of that team as well because it assists in doing your work of assessing a student’s behavior to determine whether or not that threat is a viable one. As we say oftentimes, every student who makes a threat may not pose a threat. You want to make sure that that team is including people that are counselors in the school, including people who are in the school setting, like deans or vice-principals or assistant principals. Those who know the students in question best and can give you some insight as to how they’re behaving within their classroom, how they’re behaving in the gymnasium, how they’re behaving when they’re around other children, and what their indicators are that give you concern. Cindy 04:59 And these threat assessment teams would meet weekly, monthly, or does it really depend on the school setting and the issues that they’re dealing with? Gregory 05:07 That’s correct. There’s no set meeting for this team. The team is not meeting to go find students who might be a concern. The students that they’re referring to come to their attention because of their behavior. To answer your question, the team should meet as often as possible. If it means that it meets every day or twice a week, depending on what the issues are, the most important thing is that the team is formed with a goal toward helping those students who are having concerns and to protect the school environment from any problems they may create. Cindy 05:38 Where do questions of HIPPA or FERPA? Does that play a part? Is there a legal component to this? Should the legal unit be involved in these conversations? Gregory 05:49 For sure. Again, that’s a good point too. The school district itself has to be behind this 100 percent. The point of HIPPA and issues that relate to FERPA, both of those issues and both of those laws, if you will, are basically guiding principles for people to follow when they’re in schools. HIPPA shouldn’t stop you from doing what you need to do if you’re conscious of it. You can bring people in that may also know about students’ IEP, if they have an individual education plan. It’s important that you know about it but you don’t want that to be the reason you can’t do a threat assessment. Again, having people that are expert with their students’ concerns on that team could help you along the way. Cindy 06:30 Now, this is most often used in the K–12 and in the campus setting, but is there a way that you believe that a community model of the behavioral threat assessment could be developed to help identify and refer persons of concern who may not be in a school setting? Gregory 06:47 I think there is. There’s room for that. Unfortunately, the last incident that occurred in Connecticut recently is one that may bring this to light more than in the past because of the need to expand the conversation that we’re using so successfully now in the K–12 and college environments. K–16, for the most part, has a vehicle and may have this covered. When a student steps out of the high school environment as a drop out, or, for that matter, might be expelled, are we still using our research and using what we gained from the oral history that was provided through the research of the U.S. Department of Ed. and the Secret Service to apply to students or youth or those who are of college age, for example, who may be exposing themselves or displaying certain signs that would be a concern for us if they were in school. Cindy 07:38 Right, because the reality is there are other resources available in any community, rural or urban. It’s just getting them to the resources they need prior to any type of incident. Gregory 07:49 Exactly. To that point, the goal here once we identify a student or, for that matter, a person who is not a student, who has issues that are concerning us in the school environment, our goal is to get that person the help they need. It’s not always going to lead to an arrest or any kind of incarceration or any kind of matter in which they’re going to be only put into an institution, if you will. The goal here, whether they’re in school or out of school, is to give them the help that they need to move them along and to mainstream them back into society where we can. This is the kind of thing that needs to be told to people that it’s not going to be punitive all the time. It’s a matter of really just finding those who need help and giving them the help they need. Cindy 08:27 Thank you for your time. Do you have any final words regarding emergency preparedness in a school setting that you want to share today? Gregory 08:34 I want to make sure that schools understand that, in spite of incidents that have happened recently but also happened in the years past, schools are still the safest place for children to be throughout the daytime hours. We need to make sure that we keep pushing that agenda out to schools and that they don’t necessarily panic and worry about them doing things that they cannot do. Again, a school is built for teaching and learning. For them to worry about events that are out of their control, they will be worrying until, you know, they have no solution for them. The best way to do this is to make sure they engage their local partners in law enforcement and emergency management to help them get better at planning for either school-based incidents or localized disasters that may present a challenge for them when school starts. Cindy 09:19 Thank you so much for providing us with your expertise and your time today. Gregory 09:24 My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Beat Exit Voiceover: 09:27 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. Disclaimer: 09:43 The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or polices of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues. ####END OF TRANSCRIPT####