NC saw campus threats soar in the past school year. Task force searches for solutions.
Criminal complaints for threats made at North Carolina schools are up more than 37% above pre-pandemic levels, highlighting the fear and uncertainty that’s become a part of dally school life.
Figures released at Thursday’s meeting of the N.C. Task Force For Safer Schools show 1,145 criminal complaints against students were filed by police in the 2022-23 school year for threats made on school campuses. That’s compared to the 830 to 840 threats per year before the pandemic.
“We’re seeing an uptick in the number of threats being made on school campuses,” said William Lassiter, chair of the task force.
The number of school threats is actually much higher.
Lassiter said the 1,145 total doesn’t include cyberthreats, including some being made by people outside the United States, that have flooded schools.
Rise in threats put schools on edge
This school year has been one of the most stressful in years.
School shootings across the nation, guns being found on campus and threats of mass violence have frequently led to campus lockdowns. During a Code Red lockdown, students and teachers hide in their classroom until police determine conditions are safe.
There were so many lockdowns in February that Wake County Superintendent Catty Moore and school board chair Lindsay Mahaffey issued a joint call for the public’s help to stop the threats.
For this school year, Lassiter said 64% of the threats in North Carolina schools were of the misdemeanor variety.
But Lassiter said 11% were for communicating threats of mass violence on school property. That’s about 120 cases statewide. He said 25% were for making a false report of mass violence on school property. Those cases can lead to felony charges.
Lassiter said there’s typically a spike in threats after a school shooting. He said this is only terrorizing the school community even further.
“Kids are already on edge,” Lassiter said. “Parents are already on edge. Staff are already on edge. These threats come in and we have to go to a lockdown, and obviously it’s a disconcerting situation.”
Advisory board for NC Center for Safer Schools
The task force was created to serve as an advisory board for the N.C. Center for Safer Schools to recommend ways to make schools safer.
Lassiter said the rise in school threats show why a bill requiring every public school to create a school threat assessment team is so important. Currently it’s only recommended that schools have assessment teams to help identify students who pose a threat to themselves and others.
House Bill 605 was unanimously approved Wednesday by the state Senate. It returns to the House to see whether that chamber will concur with changes made to the bill by the Senate.
“I firmly believe in my heart of hearts that it could remedy 30 years from now a (Las) Vegas shooter like we had a few years ago because we’ve addressed mental health at the earliest time period of a young individual,” Rep. John Torbett, a Gaston County Republican and primary sponsor of the bill, told a Senate committee this month.
Call for more counselors in schools
Task force members also talked Thursday about the need to have more school counselors, social workers and psychologists to help address the mental and emotional needs of students. Mental health issues are on the rise for teenagers.
Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers said the students his school resource officers pull aside often come from home environments where they’re not getting the support, care and love they need from their families.
“Often the family’s in a crisis,” said Rogers, a task force member. “Therefore the child is in a crisis, and that’s a very volatile combination.”
Schools hired more mental health support staff during the pandemic using federal COVID relief aid. But schools have to find a way to keep those positions when the federal aid goes away.
“We made progress during the pandemic,” Lassiter said. “The problem is going to be sustaining that.”
