LONGVIEW — Just about every other school day, a team of teachers, counselors and principals from the Kelso School District meet to evaluate whether a student poses a risk to other students.
They might be responding to an implied threat, a case of self-injury or act of violence, a sharp drop in grades or other hints that a student may be poised to lash out at peers and staff.
Threat assessment teams have sprung up in schools across the United States as incidents of school violence gain national attention. Kelso and Longview districts both have protocols for these teams in place, which district officials say have helped divert students from dangerous paths of violence.
This is vital, because most school shootings last under three minutes, leaving law enforcement scant time to react, Educational School District 112 threat assessment coordinator Adam Scattergood said in a recent presentation to the Kelso School Board.
“It’s more important that we learn to prevent instead of intervene … we have days, weeks, months sometimes to intervene before the attack,” Scattergood said.
The teams in charge of prevention are made up of a range of school officials and community partners that review each situation and decide on the best methods to both support the student and protect others, Scattergood said.
In 2018-19, Kelso called teams together a total of 77 times, a sharp increase from the 2015-16 school year that only had 16 total assessments. (See attached graphic for a full break down). Don Iverson, Kelso’s director of support services, told the Kelso School Board that the number of incidents aren’t actually rising, the district is simply getting better at recognizing the situations.
“That’s not because we have different types of kids, it’s because we’re getting better at identifying them,” Iverson said. “We’re getting better at providing supports for families, better at recognizing those signs. Kids are hearing something and saying something, and we’re able to get ahead of it.”
Iverson also said the district has expanded the scope of an incident that prompts an evaluation, but he expects the numbers to stabilize at some point.
“When we first started, we were looking for the kid that was planning something huge,” Iverson said. “We didn’t necessarily track the other ones. Now we’re looking at the kids with changes in behavior.”
Most incidents, Iverson said, are not “targeted” violence, but rather reactive. Reactive violence is quick, and emotion-driven, he said, while targeted violence is planned out. He estimated that 90% of incidents at Kelso are reactive, which is typical across the state.
There are two levels of assessment teams, level one and level two, Scattergood said. Level one is a school site team and is comprised of teachers, counselors and administrators at the specific school, and ideally the student’s parent.
That group evaluates the incident and either makes a plan to resolve the situation or, if the threat is more serious, calls for a level two team, Scattergood said.
A level two assessment is conducted by the site team and law enforcement, juvenile justice representatives, a threat assessment coordinator and child protective services, according to Scattergood.
In either case, the teams will intervene if a situation is dangerous. Then, they create a plan to help the student. Scattergood said that could be anything from mental health support or anger management classes to more supervision while they’re in school or an alternative education path.
Threat assessment teams try to avoid expulsion, Scattergood said, because studies have shown that can do more harm than good.
“Some students, especially those that have a history of trauma, the one support they do have is school,” Scattergood said. “So when they get expelled for something they did and they lose that one support, they actually may develop a grudge based on losing that support.”
Additionally, if a student is planning violence, kicking them out of school and giving them more unsupervised time is not the best solution, Scattergood said.
Iverson said the system requires strong collaboration between law enforcement and the community, which has made Kelso’s intervention plans successful.
“Very few people, if any, don’t follow through on pieces of the plan,” Iverson said. “People take it seriously, families understand it.”
Another vital part of the inventions are the continued support and monitoring the district provides, Iverson said, as there’s no quick fix.
“It takes time,” Iverson said. “We’ve been working with this one student for three years and we’re finally seeing him turn the corner.”
Longview follows the same protocols for threat assessment teams, Longview district spokesman Rick Parrish said.
Jill Diehl, executive director of student services in Longview, said all school administrators are trained in threat assessment protocol, so no students “fall through the cracks.”
“We do an analysis on how to best serve the needs of the student and other students,” Diehl said. “We decide how to create a safe environment for all kids and get this student the help they need.”
Parrish said all school district employees regularly go through different levels of training, including drills and practices. He also said the district’s Longview’s $119 million bond would allow for more security upgrades.
Diehl said it’s very rare that they ever reach a high level of risk, and the numbers of incidents that trigger this protocol each year are very small. Still, schools around the county regularly come together to review and monitor the data from the incidents, Diehl said.
“Instead of just saying ‘this happened’, we’re asking why,” Diehl said.
