School officials are banking on securing a federal grant that could arm teachers with information that will diffuse acts of violence in Howard County.
“Over the years, we have trained schools in crisis management and gang activity and hoped that it would trickle down to teachers and instructional staff,” school Security Coordinator Steve Drummond told a group of Hammond High School parents Thursday. “But we need teachers to have instructional training face-to-face where they can ask questions.”
Following recent incidents, including the 15-year-old who brought a gun to Hammond, Drummond hopes to obtain a federal grant to train 5,500 teachers and instructional staff in 70 Howard County schools to handle crises.
He also plans to work with police to employ two additional school resource officers. The current staff includes 13 officers and two sergeants. School security guards are not given police authority to handle criminal matters and can only intervene in “disruptions,” Drummond said.
The average cost of training and employing an resource officer is $150,000,” Drummond said.
By training teachers and bolstering police presence, state schools could go beyond the current threat assessment process to monitor students displaying disciplinary issues.
Threat assessment includes a fundamental behavioral assessment, which determines “how to give students the attention they want without the bad behavior,” Hammond Principal Sterlind Burke said. The process then calls for a behavior intervention plan to address the inappropriate behaviors and provide a psychological assessment, if necessary, Burke said.
The two steps are meant to identify problem students and reduce potential dangers, but the process needs updating, according to Drummond. His plan “is the next progression,” he said.
