News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
White County School System expects to have at least 35 trained individuals for threat assessment teams.
Attendance Supervisor Bryan Haley also runs the system’s Schools Against Violence in Education (SAVE) Act Program. Haley said once they heard that all schools would soon be required by state law to have threat assessment teams, they wanted to get the process underway.
“But more importantly than that, I think it’s important to have that because the purpose of that is to try and eliminate potential danger before it occurs,” Haley said. “So as things come our way, reports made, it gives us an opportunity to go get ahead of that.”
Haley said the threat assessment team at each school is typically made up of an administrator, an SRO, a counselor and a couple of other staff members depending on the size of the school. He said that if any kind of threat is made during the school day, the threat assessment team will discern if the threat is viable and what the next steps are.
“And you know sometimes you get things that are false alarms, sometimes things are not reported and they’re not accurate,” Haley said. “But in the event that there is some validity of things that are being reported then naturally we’re in the know fo that and we can put resources in place for students and families that might be needed. Whether that be counseling services–part of threat assessment there is a suicide piece. so it might be something like putting services in place or if action is needed.”
Haley said the threat assessment team is different than the school emergency response team (SERT). He said the SERT team relies on the school safety plan, which is the “nuts and bolts of school safety,” which runs from responses to intruders, to fires, to medical emergencies.
Haley said the training certification was made possible through a state grant program. He said they were able to get almost all of the training covered by grant funding before the state-mandated the teams.
