VALDOSTA, Ga. (WALB) – The School Safety law is a direct response to the shooting at Apalachee High School, where investigators say 14-year-old Colt Gray was enrolled on August 14 but had already missed nine days of school before taking a rifle and knife in his backpack on September 4.
State Representative Holt Persinger said, “We are really trying to highlight at-risk children or children that need mental health support to get the help before something like this happens.”
Persinger said the bill addresses the timeliness that a complete set of school records and other information are transferred before a student can enroll.
For Valdosta City Schools (VCS) this has been a practice for years with a form for new student that asks about their criminal background.
WALB asked VCS Safety and Security Director Sabrina Smith how the form helps them know the proper channels to follow up on that student’s behavior.
“The parents will complete the document that asks whether they have been convicted of a felony or if they are on probation or not, and we will follow up internally with that agency to determine what those charges are and whether it meets the requirements to be allowed in the school district or not,” Smith said.
VCS documents student behavior in the student information system, which transfers with students.
Smith said, “The goal is for us to be vigilant around that student. There could be some behaviors that are indicative of what they have the potential to do.”
Any threat to campus calls for a mandatory tribunal hearing in the district. At that time, mental health services are provided in addition to the school’s decision on disciplinary action.
“Those children who have had multiple suspensions, expelled a lot, anger outbursts and different things like that — These become red flags that we can identify,” Geenleaf Inpatient Therapist D. Jerome Garrett said. “That’s why the connection between what the teacher is seeing and the information that they give the therapist all goes into assessing.”
Genesis Lewis, Greenleaf Interim Director of Clinical Services, said this new approach will allow mental health services to address issues before law enforcement is involved.
“It completes the circle but it adds the communication and that cohesion that we need to help focus on what’s needed with the children, getting to them in a preventative timely manner and helping them to progress in an effort to avoid the sad circumstances we’ve seen here recently,” Lewis said.
The new law goes even further. It will require every one of Georgia’s 180 school districts to set up an anonymous reporting system statewide. The Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency is also required to create a database of students who have threatened violence or committed violence at schools.
WALB will be following progress on these systems over the next calendar year.
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