School Safety
By JENNIFER CARTER, Staff Writer
Skagit County Herald, January 8, 2007Following the fatal shooting of a student at a Tacoma high school last week, Skagit County educators are seeking to reassure parents and students with information about local efforts to prevent school violence.
In fact, Skagit County has the state’s first county-wide system for identifying and responding to threats of violence at school.
The program, launched last year, brings together school officials, law enforcement and mental health experts to evaluate threats and work with students to minimize the risk of violence.
Research shows that such a multi-disciplinary team approach to identifying, assessing and managing students who may present a risk is the best way to prevent actual violence, said Martin Speckmaier, a school safety consultant and retired police officer.
“School violence is not a school problem. It’s a community problem.” said Speckmaier, who has been involved with training members of the Skagit County assessment teams.
Bringing the resources and judgment of law enforcement, mental health professionals and school administrators together gives everyone a more complete picture of a student’s life and situation, said Dave Shackleton, a Mount Vernon Police school resource officer at Mount Vernon High School.
“Everybody comes to the table with what they know,” said Shackleton, a member of the school’s safety assessment team. “The goal is, how do we safely keep everybody in school.”

Since last school year, each school building in the county has had a trained safety assessment team to evaluate threats and determine how to manage students who make them.
The teams include representatives from all seven school districts, all nine law enforcement agencies as well as county mental health professionals.
This school year saw the creation of the first county-wide safety assessment team in the state. The group of experts is available to all Skagit County schools.
The program is funded through a three-year federal Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant to Northwest Educational Service District (ESD) 189, which provides support services for 35 school districts in northwest Washington. The multidisciplinary approach is also what experts recommend for preventing school violence, Speckmaier said.
In the wake of school shootings in the late 1990s, experts from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Secret Service teamed up to study so-called “targeted” violence in schools, in which students plan and prepare for violent attacks at school.

The study group’s primary conclusion was that schools need a unified team approach to assessing threats so the burden doesn’t fall entirely on school administrators, who may not have access to all the information about a student’s personal and home life and mental health, Speckmaier said.

Identifying threats

A key component of the program is a county-wide School Safety Help Line, launched last school year. The line is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It’s another way that better communication can help reduce the risk of violence, said Dave Ahrenholz, a prevention center coordinator for the ESD, which headed up the creation of the county-wide system last year.
Other students often see the warning signs before school violence occurs, he said.
“The other kids will know things, but they won’t tell anybody,” Ahrenholz said.
“They don’t want to get anyone in trouble or, if it’s a bullying situation, they’re afraid.”
But to prevent violence, Ahrenholz said, schools need students and parents with concerns about potential threats to report their worries. Flyers and refrigerator magnets with the number have been distributed to all students in Skagit County schools, according to the ESD.
Representatives from Volunteers of America Care Crisis Response Services answer the line and respond based on their assessment of the seriousness of the threat.
If a caller reports criminal activity, the help line representative calls 911. Mental health counselors are available for callers with mental health problems. Each call generates a report that goes to the ESD, the school district and the school.
As with the county-wide assessment teams, it’s also the only county-wide school safety help line in the state, Speckmaier said.
The county-wide system also means that when a student who makes a threat at one school shows up at another school, there’s a system in place to notify staff to be on the lookout for potential risks.
“That’s how this process was intended to work,” Speckmaier said.

School Safety Help Line 1-800-585-3109