Coeur d'Alene schools may standardize student threat response

COEUR d'ALENE — A proposed school district policy would formalize protocols for dealing with student threats.

The policy would require the district to develop a Student Threat Assessment Team, which would be tasked with evaluating the seriousness of student threats.

If a threat is warranted, interviews would be conducted with witnesses, parents, staff and the student who made the threat.

"This could be something uttered on the playground, something that’s typed into a Chromebook, something that is said to another student," Thomas Gandy, safety and security coordinator for the district, said Tuesday.  

Although this policy is new, responding to potentially dangerous or harmful situations isn't.

Currently, the school district addresses threats of violence on school grounds, possession of weapons and other threatening behaviors through its Student Discipline Policy, which calls for disciplinary action ranging from restitution, loss of privileges and contacting juvenile authorities to detention, suspension or expulsion if a student is found guilty.

"In the '80s, kids would call in bomb threats to get out of tests," Gandy said. "With increased violence and school violence, the way threats are handled has to be done differently."

Every threat has to be taken seriously at first, he said. 

"You never know when it's going to be real," Gandy said, adding that this new policy puts to paper the steps every school would take if any threats were made or heard.

The Student Threat Assessment Policy would go into effect at any indication of a threat, whether it was made by a second grader, a seventh grader or a 12th grader. By standardizing the response across the district, it replaces subjective responses with objectivity.

"We then have a process by which we determine not if a threat is made, but if it is credible and actionable," Gandy said.

The assessment team would consider the student's mental health, family issues, social behaviors, educational plans and other related history.

"We can then hopefully develop a picture of, 'We know what was said — how much do we believe that it poses a credible threat?'" Gandy said. "From there, we can decide what our response is."

He said this policy is not reactionary, but has been in the works for some time. Before Gandy joined the district three years ago, Coeur d'Alene adopted a nationally recognized model for threat assessment through which staff was trained.

Gandy said the district feels it's important to have a standardized response to threats. He said some states have mandates for this, but Idaho does not.

"We’re at the forefront for the state of Idaho in leading this kind of program," Gandy said. "We felt now that we’ve developed it and made it a viable program that it’s something we should really set down publicly and let the public know what we’re doing to keep their children safe, especially with how publicized these threats are getting."

Visit cdaschools.org to review the policy. Comments are due by 11:59 p.m. Nov. 10.