Education Week - August 29, 2018 - 10

Schools Turning to Anonymous Tip Lines to Thwart Violence
By Evie Blad
When students in one Oklahoma
high school finish a lockdown drill,
they hear a plea from administrators over the intercom: Report your
safety concerns.
Students can reduce the already
slim chances of an attack if they
anonymously share tips about violence, threats, and bullying through
a smartphone app or a quick phone
call.
That message, blanketed across
their school on posters, stickers, and
classroom signs, seeks to create a
culture where students feel comfortable sharing fears and seeking help
from adults, said Tim Makris, the
executive director of Sandy Hook
Promise, a gun-violence-prevention
organization.
"When an incident does happen,
they can look on the wall, look on
the floor, look on the mirror in the
bathroom, and there's something
there that can remind them to say
something," Makris said, describing
the Oklahoma school and others
that have partnered with the organization since it launched its Say
Something anonymous reporting
system in March.
There's been a surge of interest in
anonymous school violence reporting systems since the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School in Parkland, Fla.
After that tragedy, families of
slain students have lamented the
missed warning signs of the shooter's violent intentions, including
comments to coworkers and troubling posts on social media. And
anger spread through the community at the revelation that the FBI
and local law enforcement had received previous tips about the gunman, who is now on trial for killing
17 people.
Students are often the best source
about such threats.
"Any time there's a tragic situation like what happened at Sandy
Hook or Parkland, I think we all
examine what we are doing and try
to get better," said Matthew Miller,
superintendent of the Lakota, Ohio,
district, which recently partnered
with a state-run tip line.
That tip line replaced an outdated
phone system that directed calls
straight to 911 and got few reports
because it intimidated students,
he said. It's part of a broader set of
safety upgrades the district made
this spring, including additional
school resource officers and a new
system for tracking visitors.
The STOP School Violence Act,
signed into law in March by President Donald Trump as part of a
larger spending bill, includes grant
funding to help state and local governments create anonymous reporting apps and tip lines.
Florida authorized the creation
of a mobile reporting app-named
FortifyFL by Stoneman Douglas
students-as part of a broad school

safety law passed less than a month
after the attack.
Pennsylvania and Nevada approved funding for anonymous reporting systems, and at least two
other legislatures-in Kentucky
and New Jersey-considered bills
related to reporting systems in
their 2018 sessions, but did not pass
them. New systems will join others
created by states like Michigan,
Utah, and Ohio in the wake of the
2012 school shooting in Newtown,
Conn.
Many tip lines are modeled after
Colorado's Safe2Tell reporting system, created in 2004 and credited
with thwarting planned attacks. At
a recent meeting, Susan Payne, the
founder and director of Safe2Tell,
said she shared strategies with 21
states that are interested in either
launching or improving anonymous
reporting systems.
"We know, not only from a homeland security perspective, but from
a community and school perspective, that young people know long
before adults what is happening,"
Payne said.
In response to the 1999 shooting
at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the U.S. Secret Service
National Threat Assessment Center analyzed 37 targeted school attacks that occurred between 1974
and 2000. It concluded that attackers in 31 of those events had told at
least one person about their plans
beforehand.
In 22 cases, two or more people
knew about the planned attack in
advance, the agency found. In most
cases, those peers were classmates,
siblings, or friends of the attackers.
Those findings are still frequently
cited by youth-violence-prevention
experts.
"Students, teachers, staff, school
resource officers, and parents
should be provided training and
guidance on recognizing behaviors
of concern, their roles and responsibilities in reporting the behavior,
and how to report the information,"
the Threat Assessment Center said
in a July report about threat assessment, a process schools use to identify students who may pose a threat
to themselves or others.

Anonymity Is Critical
School attackers don't fit a specific
profile, the report says, adding that
shooters have been both socially isolated and popular and have had a
variety of levels of academic success.
Schools should ensure students have
a method for anonymously reporting concerns they may be reluctant
to share with adults, the report says.
That's a lesson Colorado learned
from experience. The state quickly
launched a telephone tip line after
the Columbine shooting, but it received very few tips until, acting on
feedback from students, it created
Safe2Tell in 2004, allowing callers
and app users to remain anonymous.
Safe2Tell received 16,000 reports
through its website, mobile app, and
telephone number in the 2017-18
school year, and operators, who are
part of the Colorado State Patrol,

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 29, 2018 | www.edweek.org

REPORTING SAFETY CONCERNS
Reports to Colorado's Safe2Tell tip line have increased every year
since the state launched the anonymous reporting system in 2004.
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Students are the
best source of intel

SOURCE: Safe2Tell

saw a spike after the school shootings in Parkland and Santa Fe,
Texas.
Operators triage those tips, forwarding them to local law enforcement agencies and schools as they
respond. Students can submit screen
captures from social media posts and
other supporting information to explain their concerns.
In Douglas County, Colo., school
employees field Safe2Tell reports
out of the district's call center, where
they also monitor security cameras
and dispatch school police. In emergency situations, the district shares
information with law enforcement,
like confirmations that a student is
enrolled in their school.
"When these tips come in, sometimes they come in as a concern about
a student, like, 'I'm concerned about a
friend because they are depressed,'"
said Belinda Monaghan, the district's
dispatch manager. "And then sometimes it will evolve into something different, and we will find out about a hit
list or a planned attack."
The Safe2Tell system is credited
with thwarting many credible attack
plans, once even partnering with
Royal Canadian Mounted Police who
arrested a Canadian teen at a bus
stop after operators fielded a rare report from an out-out-country tipster.
In April, deputies in Summit
County, Colo., arrested a 15-year-old
boy, acting on a tip that he'd passed
out sticky notes to classmates he
planned to spare when he carried out
a school shooting.

Tips on Suicide Are Common
Though most reporting systems
are created out of concern about
shootings, operators say they are far
more likely to receive tips about suicide, drugs, and bullying than school
violence.
In 2017-18, Safe2Tell fielded 2,786
tips about suicide, 1,831 tips about

possible drug use, and 1,641 tips
about bullying-compared to 692
tips about possible school attacks.
Sandy Hook Promise's Say Something, operated from a private, 24hour call center in Miami, has seen
similar trends, Makris said, noting
that concerns about suicide generate the most reports. Operators are
trained to respond to and identify
mental health issues, and urgent reports may be forwarded to relevant
psychiatric hotlines for counseling or
to police for a welfare check.
Tips about drug and alcohol use
may be referred to law enforcement, while reports of bullying will
go straight to school administrators.
The organization expects around
300 districts to be using its tip line
by next spring, Makris said.
The program includes training for
students about identifying signs of
violence and addressing social isolation among peers. Sandy Hook
Promise installs a full-time staff
person in districts with more than
150,000 students to help coordinate
programs. For smaller districts,
it uses a coordinator who works
across multiple school systems.
Say Something materials address
reasons students might not share
concerns, like "if this person said
it out loud then they don't meant
it," or "they're going to see me as a
snitch," by giving examples of tips
and ways schools have intervened.
"We try to make it very real
so that it's relatable and believable and we can meet them where
they're at," Makris said.
As momentum builds behind violence-prevention efforts, some civil
rights and student-data-privacy
groups are raising concerns.
In Florida, for example, data-privacy groups are cautioning against
plans to create a law enforcement
database that includes information from students' social media
accounts.

As Congress considered the STOP
School Violence Act, the NAACP
Legal Defense and Educational
Fund urged leaders of both parties
to include language that requires
reporting systems to protect students' due process rights.
Without such requirements, reporting systems "will be an easy vehicle for students or staff who hold
implicit or explicit biases against
students of color to report those
students as being a danger to themselves or others based on discriminatory reasons," the organization
said in a letter to leaders of both
political parties.
After some Colorado students
used Safe2Tell to harass peers by
calling in false reports, lawmakers
passed a bill that requires the system to annually report how often it
is used for abusive purposes.
"It's just so easy to abuse the system," Lucy Geisleman, a high school
student from Arvada told CBS 4
Denver in May.
Pranksters called in three false
drug and suicide reports about her,
Geisleman said, and police twice
pulled her out of class to discuss
the tips.
Monaghan said Douglas County
has fielded some false tips, including one from a student who submitted a report about herself, apparently seeking attention.
But the program has also helped
intervene in many concerning situations, she said, adding that "the
good outweighs the bad."

Best Practices Should Be Shared
As states, districts, and even private companies take an interest in tip
lines and reporting systems, Payne,
in Colorado, stresses they won't be
as effective as Safe2Tell if they don't
share some of its practices.
Safe2Tell is operated by law enforcement, which eliminates many
legal and logistical barriers to accessing students' educational information in crisis situations, she said.
Systems run by private companies
and nonprofit organizations may
not be able to respond as quickly,
she said.
Operators partner with the state's
fusion center, a state entity recognized by the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security and the U.S.
Department of Justice where local,
state, and federal law enforcement
agencies can quickly share information and respond to threats.
Payne also cautions against systems that don't have personnel and
processes in place to respond to tips
around the clock.
Safe2Tell sees a spike in tips on
Friday evenings, often about suicide
threats.
"It does no good if the school
doesn't pick up that report until
Monday morning, only to contact
the parents and find their child
committed suicide Sunday night,"
she said.
States should look to proven
models, rather than starting from
scratch, Payne said.
"I invite anyone to come see it," she
said. "This should not be a secret."

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Education Week - August 29, 2018

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