White County Approves School Threat Policies

White County Schools have adjusted their polices for how to handle threats of mass violence in the district.

Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said the main change is that they now have more flexibility in what is classified as an actual dangerous threat. Dronebarger said they will continue to take every threat seriously, but the old policy was too restrictive.

“There was no give or take,” Dronebarger said. “It was just all, it was too harsh in some cases. You know, we were treating some elementary students that just misspoke and didn’t really have any valid threats as real criminals, and so this is an opportunity for us to really investigate, make sure that there’s a credible threat before we go take legal action.”

Dronebarger said another policy change makes it so that when a threat is identified, law enforcement and the director are contacted immediately instead of waiting for a long investigation process. Dronebarger said that administration would then work with law enforcement to determine if that threat was credible and move forward accordingly.

“There’s a difference between, you know, two first graders saying, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ on a playground and maybe two twelfth-graders that have access to weapons,” Dronebarger said. “And so we have some flexibility there to determine whether it’s really a credible threat or not.”

Dronebarger said these threats are considered zero tolerance offenses, and a third policy change categorizes threats that turn out to be fake under the same category.

“Making a credible threat or a serious threat that turns out to be invalid can still be a suspendable offense,” Dronebarger said.