Every San Diego County School Joins Summit to Address School Threats
About 200 local administrative and law enforcement leaders gathered in San Diego Friday to review a revised protocol for how to handle school threats.
The School Safety Summit came as a response to a surge of threats at San Diego County schools in the months following a shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida on Feb. 14, 2018.
Each participant — administrators from 42 local school districts and law enforcement officers from 18 county agencies — was handed a binder that detailed the protocol each school would follow to prevent and handle threats.
The goal of the summit was to create a coordinated plan that will reduce the risk of school threats and improve the county’s response to threats.
Some of the practices in the School Safety Protocol were adapted from the “Sandy Hook Promise,” a program created to increase school safety after the 2012 shooting at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut.
In the weeks following the Parkland high school shooting that killed 17 people, the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) alone received reports of at least 49 threats towards their schools.
The shooting sparked a wave of protests across the country organized in part by high school students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The National School Walkouts were joined by students in San Diego County on two occasions since the Parkland high school shooting. Students hoped the demonstrations would make an impact on leaders in Washington. Some told NBC 7 they want Congress to make changes like banning assault weapons and implementing universal background checks.
San Diego’s first school shooting was in 1979 at Cleveland Elementary School and there were two shootings at schools in the Grossmont Union High School District in 2001, one at Santana High School and the other at Granite Hills High School.
This year, 21 juveniles have been charged in San Diego County with making threats against schools, District Attorney Summer Stephan said. None of the threats were credible, police found, but charges were filed due to the nature of the threats. Several other students have been arrested.
Law enforcement agencies encourage anyone with information on a threat, even if it appears non-credible, should report it anonymously at studentsspeakingout.org or through the app called P3 Tips, which can be downloaded from the Apple Store or The Google Play store.