A heightened fear of violence on school campuses has led to legislative efforts which are intended to mitigate potential threats, but that sometimes impinge on civil liberties; these are two of those bills. This legislation creates threat assessment teams for each school in Rhode Island and allows individual school boards to adopt relevant policies for their implementation.
We testified that while we fully support the inclusion of mental and behavioral health specialists on campus who can assist students in need of psychological support, there is a current demonstrated lack of these personnel on school campuses. Increasingly, the scarcity of these specialized staff members has been supplemented by school resource officers. We’re concerned that assembled threat assessment teams could become heavy on law enforcement and light on staff who professionally provide mental health support. We also noted that enforcement protocols like this would disproportionately affects students of color and students with disabilities, whose behaviors, actions, and words are often perceived as more threatening than those of other students.
This legislation passed both the House and Senate and was signed by the Governor.
