Threat Assessment Approval
Ohio law indicates that by March 24, 2023, the Ohio Department of Public Safety, in consultation with the Ohio Department of Education and Attorney General’s Office, must develop and maintain a list of approved training programs for school threat assessment team members, one of which must be free or of no cost to schools.
Each program approved under this section must be an evidence-based program that provides instruction in the following:
- Identifying behaviors, signs and threats that may lead to a violent act;
- Determining the seriousness of a threat; and
- Developing intervention plans that protect the potential victims and address the underlying problem or conflict that initiated the behavior and assessment of plan results.
The Ohio Department of Public Safety published the approved program list on the Ohio School Safety Center website. This web page will also include the application form and process for getting additional courses evaluated under the statutory standards for approval.
THREAT ASSESSMENT TEAMS
Beginning no later than March 24, 2023, each local, city, exempted village and joint vocational school district must create a threat assessment team for each school building in the district serving grades 6-12. If a school building has a similarly constituted safety team as of the effective date, that team also may serve as the threat assessment team as long as it complies with the below training requirements.
Ohio law states that upon appointment and once every three years thereafter, each team member must complete an approved threat assessment training program from the list maintained by the Ohio Department of Public Safety.
Each district building must include proof of completion of an approved training program by each team member in the building’s emergency management plan submission to the Director of Public Safety. Each team must be multidisciplinary, when possible, and may include school administrators, mental health professionals, school resource officers and other necessary personnel.
The Director of Public Safety Center established an administrative rule describing requirements for emergency management plans.
MODEL THREAT ASSESSMENT PLAN
By March 24, 2023, the Ohio Department of Public Safety, in consultation with the Ohio Department of Education and Attorney General’s Office, must develop a model threat assessment plan that may be used in a building’s emergency management plan developed under Ohio law. The model plan must do at least the following:
- Identify the types of threatening behavior that may represent a physical threat to a school community;
- Identify individuals to whom threatening behavior should be reported and steps to be taken by those individuals;
- Establish threat assessment guidelines, including identification, evaluation of seriousness of threat or danger, intervention to reduce potential violence and follow-up to assess intervention results;
- Establish guidelines for coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and reports collected through the district’s chosen anonymous reporting program and identify a point of contact within each agency; and
- Conform with all other specifications in a school’s emergency management plan.
Evidence-based threat assessment processes or best practice threat assessment guidelines created by the national threat assessment center must be a resource when developing the model threat assessment plan.
The model plan will be accessible on the Ohio School Safety Center website by March 24, 2023 for schools to use. The Ohio School Safety Center recognizes that schools across Ohio already have created threat assessment programs and use their own providers. The Ohio School Safety Center will research and identify best practices to include in the policy to ensure existing programs are taken into consideration and schools without policies would be able to use this guidance to implement their own programs. The Model Threat Assessment Plan will be posted on the Ohio School Safety Center’s website.
Administrators are required to add the following new components to the school emergency management plan:
- A threat assessment plan as prescribed in Ohio law. A building may use the model plan developed by the Ohio Department of Public Safety;
- A protocol for school threat assessment teams established in Ohio law.
Additional information on the Safety and Violence Education Students (SAVE Students) Act