When it comes to school threats, it is a delicate balance for districts between ensuring student and teacher safety and causing unnecessary disruption.
- Increase in school threats disrupting education
- Threats in Seminole and Volusia counties
- Officials reiterate "see something, say something"
"We take everything very seriously," said Greg Akin, chief operations officer for Volusia County Public Schools. "We'll start with it's a viable threat and then work in the direction of it not being."
Akin spent the last 22 years in the U.S. Air Force, which he said prepared him for the role of acting as a liaison between the district and law enforcement. Akin now travels the county and talks to educators and police about best practices for dealing with school threats.
"We'll find out the who, what, where, why, when and how that we can," he said. "Once we get that, we make a determination, the validity of that. We have an incident commander, (who) is normally the principal, or someone else like myself."
Over the last few days, threats of violence at Seminole and Volusia schools have disrupted classes.
The Volusia County school district on Tuesday confirmed a threat was found on a bathroom wall at New Smyrna Beach Middle School. The district is working with law enforcement to investigate the threat.
Threats were also found on bathroom stalls at University High School in Orange City on Monday and at Lake Mary High School last week. In January, nearly all of Umatilla High School's students were absent following a "vague threat."
The threat at Lake Mary prompted about 85 percent of the student population to miss school Monday, district officials said.
University High School reported 444 absences Monday, up only 66 from a normal school day last Tuesday, the district said.
"We've also seen it on social media where someone may tweet something, it gets to someone else and eventually, a parent or child goes to parent and we get notified at that point in time," Akin said. "We look at each one of the cases individually, understanding that we need to get ahead of the game and make sure that whatever it is, we can put that fire out."
Cameras in hallways, like those in Volusia County schools, help post-threat, as do strong partnerships with law enforcement to share information and resources.
However, Akin said in order to lessen the number of threats in general, districts must take preventive measures, proactively reaching students and attending to behavioral issues.
"They want to hear from their peers," he said. "We're now looking at our student leaders for tomorrow, putting some short videos together to try to educate our population on the dos and don'ts on social media. What we try to do with our students, as well, is try to get them into a condition of training so when they see something, they hear something, they say something. And let's look at that prior to something happening."
Another important thing, according to Akin, is measuring a district's response. For example, the presence of two deputies on campus following a threat might be enough to portray security. Meanwhile, two dozen deputies might unnecessarily frighten students, parents and teachers, leading to emotional responses, he said.