“Threat assessment” teams in Oregon’s Willamette Valley evaluate whether a student poses a threat of violence and decide what to do to prevent trouble. Take Eddie, a new high school student with a “history of abuse, delinquency and treatment for self-injury.”
When another student on the bus told him that he looked like someone who could bring a gun to school and shoot people, Eddie replied he was. And, he said that boy would be number one on his hit list. At school the next day, Eddie threatened other students who were harassing him. When confronted by a school administrator, Eddie admitted making threats but said he wouldn’t actually hurt anyone.
When faced with a student like Eddie, what’s a school to do?
A team of school employees, mental health professionals, law enforcement officers and others decided Eddie could stay in school with more time in a resource room and a cafeteria job to earn money.
The team recommended that Eddie’s parents remove weapons from the home; take Eddie to a doctor to review his current medications; and talk to their son positively about the school’s intervention plan. The team recommended that the school require a “no-threat no-harm†contract as part of Eddie’s return to classes; provide a mentor who could meet with him daily; seat Eddie near the driver on his bus rides to and from school; arrange a paid school job where he could interact positively with peers; and appoint a school staff person to intervene with students who target Eddie.
Eddie made some friends, passed all his classes and stayed out of trouble.
What’s impressive is the willingness to use judgment rather than “zero tolerance.”
Update: Here’s what usually happens: A 10-year-old girl brownbagging at a Florida school was arrested for using a knife to cut her meat. Zero tolerance.
The reason for the excesses of zero-tolerance policies is that they create a disincentive for administrators to exercise judgment. Fail to enforce zero-tolerance policies, no matter how ridiculous or unrelated to the purpose of keeping kids safe, and you’re toast. Exercising judgment now is punishable whether you’re right or wrong and unthinkingly enforcing the policy is rewarded. That’s hardly the position into which you want put people who are, supposedly, hired for their judgment.
This idea, while better then simply dispensing with responsibility as zero-tolerance policies do, also spreads responsibility among a number of individuals. The idea, or at least the rationale, is that different specialties improve the accuracy of the response, preventing over-reaction or under-reaction. But by spreading responsibility the cumbersomeness of the process is increased as is its vulnerability to the mistakes or incompetence of an individual team member.
Sorry, I see no reason why my, or any one else’s, child should be forced to ride a bus, sit in a cafeteria or a class room with someone like this or force me to spend substantial money to escape it. If Eddie were an adult, he’d be charged with a crime and a very serious one. Instead the school pays him for this kind of behavior.
What sort of “failure to act” litigation risk exists in these situations when one of the kids ends up hurting someone?
Mrs. Davis, Here is the reason to keep Eddie in School: We have to look at violence as a whole, rather than violence at the school. It’s no success to expel Eddie and have him hurt someone outside the school, when he could have been kept safely in school where he could learn better behavior. That’s not an improvement.
You don’t want your child to be forced to ride a bus with Eddie? I don’t want to be forced to have to deal with him in the community after he’s been thrown out of school.
Obviously, some children are just too dangerous to be kept in school. But the school decided that Eddie wasn’t one of those children. And they were right! This is a win/win situation. Eddie got to stay in school, make friends and have a job, and everybody else got to have one less violent teenager hanging around.
I’m amazed. I thought no one had any kind of sense any more.
I wrote some really violent poetry when I was in junior high, stuff that would get me thrown into an oubliette if I were a student today. But it wasn’t because I was actually likely to hurt people (other than myself); it was because I was experiencing a lot of pain and imaginary vengeance was one of the few ways I knew of to cope with it. So when I see students making lists or what-have-you, my instinct is “Why is this student in pain, and what can we do about it?”
Yeah, some are genuine threats and need to be removed from the community, but some just need more constructive ways of dealing with their problems. Sounds like Eddie got some.
It’s nice to see thoughtful, well-reasoned interventions such as this one bring success to a child who otherwise might have been shoved out of the system.
Mrs. Davis, You, madam, are part of the problem. A BIG part. Lets throw them out of school and blame them for being attacked by bullies and driven to this point! Shame on you. I was this kid 20 years ago. I lived through hellish bullying and did, on several occasions cotemplate violence.
The teachers and staff at the school blamed me for being ‘too sensitive’ and said I needed to develop a thicker skin. This did not Help me at all and encouraged these bullies to grow up to be wife beaters, meth addicts and other types of criminals.
The answer is just what was outlined above. It also needs to include prosecuting the jerks that are harassing these kids in school, on the bus and elsewhere. THOSE are the true threats.
Unfortunately, everyone wants the status quo to continue and let people believe that the football heroes and other popular kids are the victims and not the perpetrators. Even to the extent that they have changed history.
In 1999 it was a well known and reported fact that Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold were outcasts and attacked specific targets… people that had made their lives miserable.
Last summer, National Geographic released a special that said that they shot people at random and that there was no motivation. That the reports that this was an act of revenge was false.
I can find no sympathy for you. I rose above what happened to me in high school. It wasn’t a ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy that made it possible, it was sound judgement, Caring counsellors, loving parents and Almighty God. Zero Tolerance very likely would have pushed me over the edge… And in 1991, I had access to enough weapons to turn my school into a slaughterhouse.
Be glad that there are people like this out there trying to find better ways to deal with this problem. Zero Tolerance didn’t save a damned soul at Virginia Tech or in any of the other Post-Colubine events.
I’d rather save lives than stick my head in the sand. It’s what I’ve dedicated my life to do. There’s no sweeter revenge then looking into the eyes of my tormentors as I am trying to save their lives.
You see, Because we didn’t have ‘Zero Tolerance’ in 1991, I was able to become a Firefighter and EMT.
Think about it
Zero tolerance = minimum wage job.
I’m glad Mr. Walis mentioned “caring counselors”. I am a school counselor and I find my job very rewarding when I am allowed to be with students. Instead, our jobs have become more like a secretarial position and less like a counselor. In high school most of our time is spent getting the state assessments ready, processing the tests, making students’ schedules, and counting credits for graduation. Our schools are also WAY too big, it makes it harder for students to connect with the teachers. And it makes it to difficult to be creative in handling these situations.
This is a great example of school administrators doing what a school is expected to do: teach children.
Mrs. Davis: Eddie would be punished more severely if he were an adult. But he’s not an adult! He’s a kid! He needs to learn. It’s the school’s responsibility to teach him.
Props to the people on that threat assessment team.
I think this was a wonderful solution made by intelligent caring individuals. I think it is great that the people in control actually sat down and worked out a strategy instead of just making a knee jerk reaction. This gives me hope!
Hmm. In all of this, and admittedly, we certainly know only what the short article tells us, it would seem that there are some misplaced responsibilities. The school seems to be taking on virtually all of the responsibilities and role of this child’s parents. Everything that was done, which again, based on very brief information, seems to have been successful, appears to have been done almost entirely to accomodate a misbehaving, irresponsible child.
Indeed, we need to teach such children proper bahavior; that is a part of what schooling is. We also need to avoid mindless zero tolerance policies that allow administrators to avoid doing their jobs. And schools must not allow bullying, assault, etc. I just worry about this sort of thing, remembering my childhood–you know, back in the 1400’s–when a school would call a shild’s parents, explain their misbehavior, and that misbehavior would be promptly set straight–by the parents. Whatever happened to parental and individual responsibility?