Georgia school safety push faces challenges on data privacy, profiling

What resulted is House Bill 268, a hefty piece of legislation that seeks to keep schools safe, in part, by sharing some students’ behavioral health information.

During a committee hearing on the bill on Jan. 18, Rep. Scott Hilton, R-Peachtree Corners, said he received worried emails from both sides of the ideological spectrum.

“The common theme of attack seemed to be on one side, this is ‘Big Brother, Big Government,’ and then on the other side, it was kind of profiling,” he said.

How it works

In meetings around the state, House Education Chairman Chris Erwin, R-Homer, said educators told him, “I can already buy metal detectors. I can already buy clear book bags. I can already buy all the things that are out in the market,” he recalled, in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

They pleaded instead for policy support: “Help me to prevent this, and help me to assess it, and help us communicate with other agencies,” he said.

The House bill requires schools to develop physical safety plans in the event of an active shooter. It also requires schools to share behavioral health information about transferring students within five days of their arrival to a new school. And it aims to address chronic absenteeism by triggering an assessment once the number of days a student has missed reaches a certain threshold.

Lawmakers say key warning signs were missed about the behavior of Colt Gray, who is charged with killing two students, a teacher and a football coach in Barrow County last September. Detected earlier, those signs could have prevented the shooting, they say. Gray’s grandmother said she believed his “mental health had deteriorated,” according to The Washington Post.

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Holt Persinger, a Republican who represents Barrow County. It would also require schools to provide suicide awareness and prevention training and install school-based mental health coordinators.

“This person is going to have some training underneath his or her belt to recognize, ‘Is this depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder? What is this?’ And then, ‘how do I connect them to the services that will best treat them in the best way so that they can have productive life?’” Erwin said.

Concern

HB 268 would also develop a database with information about students who have made credible threats. That information would be shared on a “need-to-know basis” between school administrators, law enforcement and mental health coordinators, Persinger said in an interview with the AJC.

“If a student is not in my school, I don’t have access to their records. If it’s a teacher in the school that doesn’t have that student in their class, they don’t have access to those records,” he said. “It’s only the administration and teachers that have direct contact with that student and law enforcement, if necessary.”

The bill would also institute an anonymous platform, where anyone could report students who may pose a threat to school, staff, students or themselves. That information would then be directed to a specialized team, which would review the credibility of those reported threats.

Whether a student then meets with a behavioral health counselor or a police officer is determined on a case-by-case basis, Erwin and Persinger said.

But it’s who makes those reports and who is targeted that concerns Rep. Phil Olaleye, D-Atlanta.

“Anytime you’re talking about disciplining students based on what a student or an educator may perceive as a threat, it lends itself to subjectivity,” he said. “When you look at disciplinary records and who typically is disciplined for doing ‘wrong’ disproportionately, those young men and women tend to be Black and brown.”

The legislation creates a tension between kids who could be a danger to themselves or others and kids who were reported but were not exhibiting suspicious behavior. That latter can be harmful too, Olaleye said.

“If a student is pulled into a room because of an action that someone else perceived to be threatening — that’s still an ordeal that student has to go through,” he said.

Olaleye wants the reporting to be private, not anonymous, so there is some accountability in case someone is making false claims. He also wants to collect data about which student records have been marked to further safeguard against profiling.

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com

Linda Criblez, the deputy director of Homeland Security, said there is no reliable profile of the school shooter or individual that wants to do harm to themselves or others.

“There is no demographic there of any sort. It’s all about behavior. What we’re looking to capture is the pathway to violence, which starts with the grievance, and then if they’re really serious about it, they start planning,” she said.

However, there is some data available. According to The Violence Project, a nonpartisan research nonprofit, out of 195 mass shooters studied, 98% of them were male. Among school or university-based shootings, male shooters tend to be younger but typically have a history of trauma, bullying or feelings of rejection. When it comes to race and ethnicity, about 53% of mass shooters are white, followed by about 21% who are Black, and 8.1% who are Latino. Asian, Middle Eastern and Native American make up the remaining figures.

Regardless of demographics, Criblez said all students should have the care they need and would be supported if any issues arise.

Rep. Lydia Glaize, D-Fairburn, wants to ensure students’ records are cleared if a case has been closed. And if a student has met their treatment or disciplinary plan, she also wants an opportunity for their case to be removed from their records, to protect them from long-term consequences.

A different approach

Democrats, who are in the minority, have their own ideas about how to prevent school shootings. They largely center on stricter gun control.

State Rep. Michelle Au, D-Johns Creek, has filed House Bill 1, which makes it a crime to store firearms improperly around children.

In the state Senate, Democrats Elena Parent, David Lucas and Nikki Merritt have also filed measures that would include mandating a 10-day waiting period before making gun purchases, prohibiting firearm access for anyone convicted of family violence and instituting so-called “red-flag” laws that would notify gun sellers if someone seeking to purchase a weapon has been hospitalized for a mental health crisis.

But the Senate is more likely to pass Republican measures. Those include Senate Bill 17, which would require local school systems to implement a panic alert system to ensure real-time coordination between first responders in the event of a school security emergency, and Senate Bill 61, which would also require information related to school safety be shared between schools and law enforcement and among school districts.