School hosted NTAC seminar

Law enforcement officials, school staff and others spent Thursday morning learning from the Secret Service.

Jay School Corporation hosted the United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center for the seminar “Threat Assessment: A behavior-based approach to preventing targeted violence” with school resource officers and other staff invited from across the state.

“I think prevention of school violence is one of the most important parts of school safety,” said Jay School Corporation superintendent Jeremy Gulley prior to Thursday’s event. “The work the Secret Service does in analyzing threats and preventing violence is a real asset.”

He said he was previously unaware that helping schools with safety initiatives was mission of the Secret Service but that the connection came through staff from the office of U.S. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana).

Thursday’s seminar focused on two school-based research reports completed by the National Threat Assessment Center in the last few years and its three-step model:

•Identifying individuals of concern

•Assessing whether they pose a risk

•If there is a risk, how to manage it

The Averting Target School Violence report published in 2021 — it is available on the Secret Service website at secretservice.gov — indicates that there are almost always intervention points before a student’s behavior escalates to violence. That report and the Protecting America’s Schools report both included students who had a history of school discipline and contact with law enforcement, experienced bullying or metal health issues, intended to commit suicide as part of the attack, used drugs or alcohol, or had been impacted by adverse childhood experiences.

The study’s key findings indicate that school violence can be prevented when communities identify warning signs and intervene.

“We talk a lot about just making sure that there is some sort of reporting mechanism and that people know what should they be reporting, where do they report it to, what happens to that information,” said Arna Carlock, a supervisory social sciences research specialist who has been with the Secret Service for about five years. “And all that works together to create a safe school climate where everybody feels like they have a personal stake in keeping the community stake.”

For Jay Schools, that reporting mechanism is Say Something. It is available via a smartphone app, sandyhookpromise.org or by calling (844) 5-SayNow, which translates to (844) 572-9669. There is also a link to a reporting form on the right side of the Jay School Corporation website at jayschoolcorp.org. Tips, which can be reported anonymously, are forwarded immediately to local law enforcement and school officials while also being evaluated by counselors at Say Something’s crisis center.

“It has been a game-changer for how we protect our kids,” Gulley told those in attendance before introducing Carlock and Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center domestic security strategist Robert Grooms.

Thirty-four school resource officers from across the state, about 20 school administrators, local law enforcement, mental health professionals, State Rep. Matt Lehman (R-Berne) and others were among the more than 100 who took part in the seminar.