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HARRISBURG, Pa. – A threat reporting system is now required in all schools in Pennsylvania and has generated more than 4,900 warnings in its first month, of which about a third is deemed serious enough to be passed on to local police and school officials .
The goal of the Safe 2 Say Something program, which provides advice to a 24-hour call center at the Attorney General's office in Harrisburg, is to respond to troubling behavior, unsafe school anything else deemed appropriate.
Last year, the program was passed almost unanimously by the legislature, forcing it to include all kindergarten to grade 12 students in Pennsylvania, including private schools, private schools, and schools. technical and vocational schools.
Senator Scott Martin, one of the main sponsors of the new law, has been encouraged by the volume of tips so far.
"I think that, in itself, that justifies why we have to do that and why it's important," said Martin, R-Lancaster.
Reports come in through phone calls, email, and an app. Callers are assured of anonymity.
In the first month, nearly 1,400 contacts were considered "safety for life" tips, deemed important enough to inform schools and the local 911 center. Attorney General Josh Shapiro told lawmakers at a hearing last week that these tips included suicide threats and situations in which students could have injured other people without intervention. Other calls regularly deal with harassment, bullying and mental health issues, Shapiro's office said.
The non-profit organization Sandy Hook Promise provided technical assistance, training assistance and materials to help the program get started. Sandy Hook Promise CEO Tim Makris said similar programs are mandatory in four other states and at least a dozen others are considering at least creating their own version.
The vast majority of tips are sent via the app and online, the rest via a direct line, Makris said.
Pennsylvania is the first state to launch the program in a comprehensive way: training schools, students, 911 operators and the appeals team at the Attorney General's office, said Makris.
Each district is supposed to be a group of three to five people able to answer tips. Makris said that it was difficult to locate contact information for all of the approximately 3,000 private state schools.
"And as a result, a small number – let's keep it in perspective – a small number of schools learned about the existence of the program only after the start of our activities in September", said Makris. "It made them come to the party late."
About 85% of all K-12 schools are currently participating, including almost all of the state's 500 public school districts.
The goal is "to teach children and adults around them how to identify and intervene with people who may hurt themselves or others by words, deeds, weapons," Makris said. "In the end, we are trying to create safer schools and protect them from extreme conditions, mass shootings."
The Attorney General's office indicates that 3,800 schools are already participating.
In Philadelphia, the state's largest public school district, deployment is just beginning. District officials began contacting schools and sending letters to parents in different languages, said spokeswoman Megan Lello. She added that Philadelphia expects the training to be completed by mid-March.
Legislators have earmarked about $ 600,000 for the program until June, at the end of the fiscal year, and Shapiro wants to double that figure for the full year of 2019-20. Until now, the call center has hired eight analysts and two supervisors.
The program is exempt from the state's open archives laws and guarantees confidentiality. However, prosecutors and criminal defendants may request tipping registrations – with the name of the informant redacted – leaving the decision to provide these recordings to a judge who must first examine the record privately .
Making a false report under the Safe 2 Say Something program is a criminal offense. The false report rate is currently less than 1%, about the same as the national average for such threat reporting systems at the school, the Attorney General's office said.
The Shapiro office must produce annually, by August 1st, a report showing the total number of calls for the year and the duration of the program, the manner in which the calls were received, the calls broken down by school entity and costs. The Attorney General's office must also disclose the number of false reports.
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