CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Staff from schools across the Coastal Bend took part in a workshop Tuesday that will help mitigate threats on campus.
The workshop was a result of Senate Bill 11, which says all school districts and charter schools need to have a threat assessment team.
A threat assessment team is supposed to be able to identify and handle certain situations that effect the school before they become dangerous, but there are basic things staff need to know before they can do that.
"One of the most common questions is, 'How do we know what we are looking for?'" School Safety Specialist Laura Stone said.
Stone works with the Texas School Safety Center and alongside Jeff Pollard with Sigma Threat Assessment Management help schools build a foundation to create teams who can assess threats.
"We need a process in place to figure out if this person is dangerous or not," Pollard said. "So we want to know the difference between someone making a threat and someone posing a threat."
Pollard teaches people a series of ways in which they can do that.
"There are particularly empirically supported questions you can ask to determine whether someone is on the path to violence or not," Pollard said.
After the faculty complete the workshop, they can take the training back to their districts and help roll out a policy or procedure that works for them.
Senate Bill 11 also addresses topics like higher education initatives, mental health and bullying.
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