State launches school safety tip line

By Jim Sabataso
RUTLAND HERALD
A new tip line is the latest tool being deployed to help keep Vermont schools safe.

The Vermont School Safety Tip Line was launched earlier this fall by the Department of Public Safety in partnership with the Agency of Education.

The tip line — which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week — allows students, educators and community members to anonymously report any “concerning behaviors” they observe.

According to the website, safe4vt.org, “These tips will assist law enforcement, human service providers and school administrators in identifying school threats and coordinating assistance to students and families for services not needing immediate response.”

The rollout is unfortunately timely, as violent incidents in schools are once again on the rise this fall after a year of relative quiet due to the pandemic-related remote and hybrid learning.

Last week, a 15-year-old student at a Michigan high school allegedly shot and killed four classmates and injured seven others.

In Vermont, the current academic year has seen an uptick in disruptive and violent behaviors.

On Wednesday, VTDigger reported on situations at several schools in recent days, including threats by students to bring firearms to school at Mount Abraham Union Middle/High School, a bomb threat at Hartford High School and an unspecified threat allegedly made by a student at Twinfield Union School.

Lt. Shawn Loan is a member of Vermont State Police and commander of the Vermont Intelligence Center (VIC), which oversees the tip line.

According to its website, VIC’s mission is to “collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence information in an effort to identify, investigate and prevent criminal activity and protect the citizens and critical infrastructures vital to our society.”

To achieve that mission, VIC works with various federal entities, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI Joint Terrorism Taskforce, U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The tip line, which is funded through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Administration, has been in the works since 2018.

Loan said the pandemic slowed down progress and contributed to what he called a “soft rollout” in schools this fall.

“We didn’t want to add more stress to the school systems with all that’s going on,” he said, adding that call volume to the tip line is still somewhat low.

Now operational, Loan said the goal of the tip line is to become the point where people can report concerns and prevent incidents.

“It’s a spot for administrators or parents or students to call and get in contact with law enforcement in order to prevent violence in schools, whether it be a school shooting or significant violent event,” he said.

Tips can be submitted anonymously by phone, text or through an online portal.

While he expects people will also use it to report human services needs, he said those reports will be forwarded to the appropriate entities, such as the Department for Children and Families (DCF) or VT 211.

Appropriate tips will be reviewed by a team of trained school safety stakeholders. The team has been trained as part of another grant the state received for the development and implementation of a behavioral threat assessment process.

Credible tips are passed along to local law enforcement, school officials and the Governor’s School Safety Council.

Loan said the types of tips people submit might include concerning behaviors in or out of school or on social media. He noted, however, that the tip line is not designed to handle immediate threats.

“If you have an exigent threat, you need to call the police, you need to call 911. Don’t call the tip line,” he said.

Loan stated that his unit’s data on school-based threats is incomplete since VIC only started monitoring threats in 2019 and is still analyzing data for the past three years.

Moreover, he said VIC currently only collects data from law enforcement and media reports. Collecting data from schools is still a work in progress, he said, explaining that VIC is waiting for schools to get past the pandemic before it adds another responsibility to their plates.

He added that the year 2020 was not a helpful data point since so many schools were in hybrid or remote learning, which resulted in an overall decline of incidents.

With those caveats, he reported that there have been 31 school-based threats reported in 2021. Those threats range from a threatening email to a student threatening to bring a firearm to school.

“So that’s the only issue with the data is, ‘What’s 31 relevant to?’ I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know if it’s up or down. That’s what we’re trying to get ahold of now,” he said.

Rob Evans, who serves as school safety liaison for the Agency of Education and the Department of Public Safety, said school safety is an issue the state has been focused on since the Columbine shooting in 1999.

“Obviously, Michigan is just another stark reminder about the tragedies and threats and vulnerabilities that our schools face each and every day,” he said.

School safety tip lines, he said — which are common across the country — are another useful avenue for people to submit information.

“We believe that the best practice is to have a variety of modalities for folks to be able to speak to concerns that they may have about behaviors or activities that may have a negative impact on our schools,” he said.

Evans said analysis of past acts of violence in schools has shown that perpetrators often exhibit warning signs before they commit an act.

“If we’re able to connect those dots prior to those things happening, then, obviously, there’s a potential to stop them from happening in the first place,” he said.

Connecting those dots is what prevented tragedy at Fair Haven Union High School in 2018 when law enforcement was informed that a former student had allegedly discussed plans to carry out an attack at the school.

Both Loan and Evans pointed to that threat as, at least in part, the impetus for the tip line.

That experience still resonates for Brooke Olsen-Farrell, superintendent of Slate Valley Unified Union School District, which oversees FHUHS.

Olsen-Farrell represents superintendents on the Vermont School Crisis Planning Team, which assesses threats and provides guidance for emergency preparedness in K-12 schools, including the tip line.

In light of the Michigan shooting and increases in incidents and threats locally, she said school administrators she’s spoken with are on edge.

“They are understandably nervous and wanting to make sure that they’re doing everything they possibly can as a school administrator and as a school district to help prevent these types of incidents for from occurring,” she said.

Olsen-Farrell noted that the pandemic-related disruptions of the past 18 months have resulted in a number of students who are dysregulated and in need of mental health supports, which has been exacerbated by a lack of staff to meet those needs.

While Slate Valley is not immune to these issues, she said what she’s seeing is not severe — a fact she attributed to district schools not being remote last year.

“We have an escalation, definitely, in minor disruptive behaviors, but we’re not necessarily seeing that with hazing, harassment and bullying and an increased need in threat assessment,” she said.

She added that SV has also been acutely tuned in to school safety since the situation in 2018.

“We have a pretty intense behavioral threat assessment process whenever a concern is brought forward,” she said.

As a member of the school crisis planning team, she encourages other schools to adopt behavioral threat assessment processes. She also maintained that prevention requires community partnerships and vigilance.

“When we have concerns around student safety, we really need to be taking a collaborative approach with our community partners. It’s really everybody’s responsibility to keep our kids and our schools safe,” she said.

Tips to the Vermont School Safety Tip Line can be submitted at safe4vt.org online, by calling 844-SAFE4VT (723-3488) or texting “SAFE4VT” to 274637.

jim.sabataso @rutlandherald.com