October 3, 2024 • 23 mins
Our #BVUnmuted series continues with a focus on school safety, understanding threats and their consequences. Dr. Katie Collier, deputy superintendent for learning, is joined by Interim Chief Simon Happer (Overland Park Police Department) and Dan Carney (Director of Safety & Security) to discuss how Blue Valley ensures a safe and secure environment for our students and staff.
Remember that if you see something, report it! Don’t repost it. 📵
#BVTogether
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
BV Unmuted Intro (00:00):
I think the beauty about our community in
(00:05):
the Blue Valley School Districtis that we can all work
together. You're really alwaysjust looking forward to just go
back to school, just to see thepride that people have in Blue
Valley School District yearafter year is so much fun to
watch. You can't find thisanywhere else. I am so thankful
we live where we live and canhave our children in the Blue
Valley school systems.
Dr. Katie Collier (00:29):
Welcome to Blue Valley Unmuted. We're so
thankful to have you with ustoday. I'm Dr Katie Collier. I'm
Blue Valley Schools deputysuperintendent and joining me on
this segment today is ourOverland Park interim Chief
Simon Happer and our director ofsafety and security for Blue
Valley Schools, Dan Carney,again, thank you so much for
(00:50):
being here. We want to talktoday about what we have
experienced across the nationand here in our own school
district, is this uptick inthreats against our schools, and
we really want to spend sometime today helping our parent
community understand theconsequences associated with
school threats. And we want tohelp our parents understand what
(01:14):
we do as a school district tokeep our schools safe. And
really we seek to be inpartnership with our parents
when it comes to school safety,but we're also in partnership
with our students. We have agreat history of our students
being partners with us, and wewant to continue to have our
students be partners with us. SoI am going to go ahead and start
(01:34):
with you. Dan Carney, can youexplain for us? Help our parents
understand if and when wereceive a threat against one of
our schools that might occur onsocial media, how do we process
that once we receive thatinformation?
Dan Carney (01:52):
Well, when we're notified of a threat, we we kind
of go into, say, like a redalert mode immediately, we want
to do a quick analysis of thethreat just to understand it,
understand what exactly it is,and then, first and foremost,
ensure the safety of anyone whohas been threatened, whether
(02:13):
that's the whole school, whetherthat's a specific student or a
group of students, obviously, ifschool is in session at the time
that may call for one responseversus if it's after school
hours. Either way, we're goingto get in touch with our local
police department, which most ofthe time is Overland Park,
because that's where themajority of our schools are, but
(02:35):
we do have schools in Leawoodand so on. So we'll get with our
partners and try to track downthe origin of the threat, talk
to any witnesses you know, kindof it basically just opens an
investigation. I think it'simportant to note that when a
threat occurs, if it'sdetermined that that meets the
elements of the statute forcriminal threat, that is a
(02:58):
felony and I'm not sure thatpeople know that, but you make a
threat, you try to put people infear by making a threat of
violence. That is a felony.
Dr. Katie Collier (03:09):
Chief Happer, I wonder if you can tell us, how
do you process as our partnersin law enforcement threats when
they're credible or not credibleto our schools?
Interim Chief Simon Happer (03:20):
So sure, we're looking right away
at the threat itself, and thenone of the important things that
we have is the school resourceofficers who are in your high
schools, your middle schools,and then working with the
district safety and securityteam to address and see if that
kid could be a threat and becredible. Generally speaking, we
go out and try to find if we cantrace down to where it came
(03:41):
from, we go and talk to thatindividual, talk to the parents,
obviously, and we're trying toget to the bottom of the threat.
Is it credible? Is it somethingthat could be carried out? Is it
something that just got passedon and along and along and
actually came from somewhereelse? So we're really trying to
find that one of the things thatwe do is we do have a good
relationship with a lot of thesocial media platforms and the
(04:04):
companies that run those to getinformation on those we can find
out possibly, where a threatoriginated. So we look into
that, and then obviously, ifit's credible, then we take the
appropriate action, as Dan said,it is a felony, and if we can
prove that, we're going to takethem and take them into custody
and take them out to thejuvenile and take an assessment
(04:24):
center and then let the districtattorney decide on charging
Dr. Katie Collier (04:29):
Oftentimes, when our teens are on social
media, they may think that thatcontent that they're sharing
back and forth between eachother is actually just between
them, their small group offriends, they think they may be
making statements that are justjokes. So I'm wondering, one,
(04:49):
what if something is just ajoke, as perceived by this
student? And secondly, shouldthey consider that when they're
on social media, that content isprivate?
Interim Chief Simon Happer (05:00):
You know, I'm going to say that
nothing you put on social mediaor on the Internet is private. I
know there's a belief thatSnapchat goes away, Snapchat
sees it. And one of the thingsthat we've seen this year is
that some of the social mediaplatforms are actually building
algorithms to look in forkeywords that would lead to
something that could be violenceagainst a school that comes up,
(05:22):
if it hits that, they're lettingus know. And I think that's
where you've seen some of theuptick locally is through those
sources. So we're having toinvestigate those so that
innocent thing you put outthere, whether it's a joke or
not, AI doesn't know it's ajoke. It just reads it and says,
those are the keywords we'relooking for, and then we get
notified of it.
Dan Carney (05:41):
I might add also that we may determine, and
actually most of the time, wedetermine, that these threats
are transient, or they're theyreally pose no real threat, but
making the threat is still acrime, correct? And so even
though you didn't mean it, eventhough it was a joke, there, may
be legal consequences to that,not to mention all of the other
(06:05):
consequences, such assuspension, expulsion from
school, losing friendships.
There's just a whole list of badthings that can happen as a
result of making a threat.
Dr. Katie Collier (06:17):
Certainly we want all of our students and all
of the adults that work in ourschools to feel safe in their
learning and work environmentevery single day. And so I'm
wondering, Dan, what shouldstudents do if they see
something online that theyinterpret as a threat to school?
(06:39):
Who should they report that to?
If a parent sees it, should theyshare that on social media to
make other parents aware that itlooks like there's a threat
against a school? Just whatshould we do?
Dan Carney (06:50):
Well, we've picked up on a little phrase that kind
of is very concise. It says,report, don't repost. When you
repost, you're keeping theproblem alive. You're keeping
the threat alive. That may betotally nonsense, but when you
repost you cause more angst, andif you just report it, then we
can get to the bottom of it. Thepolice department can get to the
(07:11):
bottom of it, but I would say ifyou see something, you feel it's
threatening, you can call thelocal police. It's probably the
best and quickest thing to do,especially if it's after school
hours. If it's during schoolhours, you still can call the
police department. You cancontact the school police
officers. We also if, if peoplewant to remain anonymous, we
(07:32):
have a Safe Schools Hotline,239-HELP. If you go to our
website, Blue Valley SchoolDistrict and click on the safety
tab, you'll find the SafeSchools hotline. You'll also
find the p3 tips app, whichanyone can use to report
anonymously. This is associatedwith the tips hotline.
Everybody's familiar with thatKansas City operates, and you
(07:53):
can report a threat there aswell. All those things I just
mentioned are answeredimmediately, you know, sending
an email at nine o'clock atnight to someone in the school
district may or may not getaddressed right away, because we
don't necessarily see our emailimmediately. So I think doing
one of those things is going toget immediate attention.
Dr. Katie Collier (08:15):
You know, our school principals go to school
to be school principals investedin the education of students.
What I'm wondering about is, howcan we help our parents
understand what qualifies ourprincipals to determine whether
or not a threat is of substanceor not when they experience a
(08:38):
report from a student or aparent? Is that working with our
local law enforcement, or is itstrategies they've been taught?
Can you help our parentsunderstand about how our
principals go about this?
Dan Carney (08:51):
Yeah, about a year and a half ago, we adopted a
threat assessment program calledthe Comprehensive School Threat
Assessment guidelines. This is aprogram that was developed
originally called the Virginiamodel. Now it's named
differently, but it's the samemodel that Dr. Dewey Cornell
from the University of Virginiadeveloped it. And basically what
it tries to do, very simpleform, is train principals,
(09:15):
counselors, schoolpsychologists, police officers
to kind of unwrap a threat, tomake a determination about
whether the threat is transientor substantive. So does it have
substance, or is it somethingthat is perhaps a joke,
something to garner attention?
You know, that kind of thing,that where the person really
(09:37):
doesn't pose a threat, whichagain, is what 90 something plus
percent of threats are. So allof our all of those people I
mentioned, have been throughquite a bit of training to learn
this program. It's kind of afive step program, and helps
them to unravel these threatsthat come in to understand them
better, to understand what's atthe heart of them, what might be
(10:00):
causing a student to make athreat, those sorts of things.
They spend a lot of time goingthrough scenarios and learning
how to do that. It's a programthat has been tested for
positive results. It's listed inthe National Registry of
evidence based programs.
Dr. Katie Collier (10:20):
I know our principals have taken that
training very seriously. All ofour staff that our
administrators, new toadministrative team, have access
to that training, and it's justreally been invaluable. Chief
Happer. I'm wondering, though,what happens when the police
department receives informationabout a threat and it's late on
(10:42):
a Sunday night and we'restarting school on a Monday, and
maybe families or students areaware of a threat and they want
to be able to go to schoolfeeling safe Monday morning.
What does the department do whenthose things happen late at
night or on a weekend?
Interim Chief Simon Happe (10:58):
Well, the first thing I want to make
sure and encourage everyone todo is to report them. A lot of
times, people look at things andthey go, Ah, I really don't want
to bother the police department.
It's our job. That's what wesigned up to do. So when we get
those officers, you know,generally, a street officer,
district officer, will get thatmay start looking into it.
Generally speaking, we're goingto call one of our sergeants and
(11:20):
our school resource either forthe north end of the city or the
south end, so either Blue Valleyor Shawnee Mission and St Thomas
Aquinas. And we're going to tryto find the SRO that would be
best to help us out with this.
Again, they've all had thetraining that Dan just talked
about, so we give themadditional training in being an
SRO and how to address thesethings. So we're going to get
(11:43):
them involved a they know theschools. So we're trying to get
the an officer involved whoknows the school, is aware, has
a relationship with the staffand the principal. Because a lot
of times we find the principalsyou know teachers in those
schools. They know these kids,and they know whether this, you
know, that's probably Johnnyjoking around, or, no, that that
(12:03):
doesn't sound like him. That's,that's, we need to do that so
it's looking into that. But,yeah, we, we take them all
seriously. There are none thatcome in and we just look at go,
eh? No, we, we're going toinvestigate it, because the last
thing we want is somebody comingto school, you know, bringing
their kids unsafe. One of thethings we do try to do is then
get that information out thatwe've investigated it and
(12:23):
whether it's true or not. Butwe're also going to work with
Dan and his team to maybe have alittle stronger police presence
around so if it's at a highschool, you know, or a middle
school, we're going to have alittle bit stronger police
presence around there, just tokind of calm the nerves of the
patrons of the school, the youknow, the families, so that
they're comfortable going toschool. But again, we're pulling
in whoever we need if we needdetectives. It doesn't matter
(12:45):
we're a 24 hour a day operation.
We call people in if we needthem. And, you know, I've never
seen one of our district officeror school resource officers, or,
you know, or Dan, not answer hisphone in the middle of the night
when we have one of these, andthat's generally when they come
in is when they're at home inthe evening and they're texting
and chatting and doing all thatstuff.
Dan Carney (13:05):
You know, I would just add on to that that is so
true, and we're so appreciativeof Overland Park Police, Leawood
police, that they do jump onthese in the middle of the
night. And I would say this, ifyour student makes a threat
online in the evening, afterschool hours, you can probably
expect a visit from the policedepartment that evening.
(13:28):
That is correct, Dan. We will,and that's the thing. You want
to get face to face withsomebody so you can see their
reaction, kind of see how it is,see if the parents understand
these things. We're alsochecking to see if it's a threat
they're going to shoot up aschool? Is there a means to do
that? You know, are there gunsin the house? Are those things?
Are they secure? That's one ofthe things we're really looking
(13:48):
at, is to build, to build thecase, but also to disprove the
case, if that's the the anglethis goes.
Dr. Katie Collier (13:56):
So we've talked about our parents, our
students, other communitymembers being partners with us
and reporting threats to us.
What advice can we give to ourparents who may have teens on
social media? How can we helpparents help their students from
engaging in something onlinethat would create really some
(14:18):
serious consequences for them?
Interim Chief Simon Happe (14:24):
Well, I think, I think the first thing
is to know what social mediayour kids have and what they're
doing on it, and take a lookevery once while, sit down with
them. Talk it. Don't make itaccusatory. Don't make it you
know, I got you, but it's a sitdown and just say, because one
of the things that a lot ofpeople don't know is there's a
lot of companies, besides theOverland Park Police Department,
there's private companies thatare doing a search of your
(14:45):
social media history, andthey're looking for things in
there, and they have companiesthat do that now, and they'll go
back and search. So when you'relooking for a job down the road,
and we find it, every once in awhile, we'll have an officer
that's liked something whenthey're 16, and, you know, it's
probably inappropriate, and sowe talk to him about it. It
doesn't mean you're out, but itdoes raise some, you know, it
raised some flags that we needto look into. But the biggest
(15:07):
thing I can say is parents needto really sit down and
understand what their kids aredoing online. You know, are they
liking jokes that areinappropriate, that could, you
know, have consequences down theroad? Are they bullying? I mean,
these kids are bullying eachother a lot online, whether it's
through texting, but a lot ofit's through social media, and
(15:27):
it's easy to do, because you canbe anywhere in the world and
bully somebody so you know, andthat's important for the parents
to know, because there's a lotof other things that parents
wouldn't even know their kidshaving a problem, but they might
be able to find out by sharingthat experience and again,
making it just, hey, you know,we're just going to go through
and talk about this. There's notconsequences, unless there's
something really bad there. Butyou know, just that building
(15:49):
that relationship and that trustwith your child.
Dan Carney (15:51):
We really do need parents help on this, this, this
problem. We've seen a, we'veseen a real uptick in the number
of threats since the school yearbegan, and it's it's causing
kids to be fearful. And we getreports of that from parents.
They email us, they say, I keptmy child home today because I
heard this. Heard about thisthreat. We have parents who say
(16:15):
that their kids are justgenerally afraid to go to
school. And I kind of look atthat is kind of collateral
damage from the from the threatitself, and I think that that is
a serious problem. I was lookingat this study done by Harvard
University. They have a Centeron the Developing Child, and
basically their studies showedscience, showed that early
(16:38):
exposure to persistent fear andanxiety and chronic anxiety can
have lifelong effects on brainarchitecture. In other words, it
can diminish a child's abilityto learn, and it can, it can
last across the lifespan to haveto deal with this chronic fear
and anxiety about, am I going togo to school and be harmed by
someone? So it is a serious,serious matter. And again, it's
(17:03):
not just that it's eating uppolice resources that obviously
is extremely important, becausethere's a lot of things out
there that really need policeintervention. But it's, it's
causing this, this kind of,it's, I think nationally, it's
causing this kind of temperatureof fear and anxiety around
schools, and it's just not not agood thing.
Dr. Katie Collier (17:24):
We want our students and our schools to feel
safe, connected, happy, andcertainly, we know thatwhen
students have a wide range ofemotions that can be
overwhelming, they are lookingfor opportunities and ways to
communicate that sometimes thatmay be communicated in an
(17:46):
ineffective way throughsomething on social media, but
we do want to remind our parentsand our students that we have
mental health teams in ourschools who are absolutely ready
and available To assist andsupport a student or a family.
Sometimes it's a matter of justtalking out a particular topic
(18:07):
or situation. Maybe it's theneed to have access to broader
resources. I know our studentshave access to our SRO officers,
our Overland Park officers thatare in schools that they make
connections with, that they cantalk to and process, and we can
help a student and a parent haveaccess to resources outside of
(18:27):
our school. So we certainly wantto remind everyone that those
things certainly are available.
I know our time is probablyabout running. Running up here,
I want to make sure I give youeach an opportunity. If there's
anything that you as we wind up,that you would really want
parents to know on this topic,certainly, our schools are safe,
right? While we've had an uptickin threats, we've seen that
(18:52):
locally and nationally. In BlueValley, we have many layers to
security, and our schools aresafe. We want to continue to
have our parents feel reallyconfident sending their children
to our schools every day. But isthere anything else on this
topic that you would want tomake sure you had, that you had
the chance to express before wewrap up today?
Interim Chief Simon Happe (19:12):
Yeah, you know, I think one of the
biggest things is, if a parentsees something, then say
something to us. If a studentsees something, say something
please, when you see thesethings, let us know we'd much
rather investigate something andfind it's not true than not be
able to investigate it andsomething happened. If you have
a question, call your schoolprobably has either a school
(19:34):
resource officer in it from thepolice department or from the
Blue Valley School Police. Andthat's one of the things. And
one of the other things I wantto say is to say is for people,
is that that school resourceofficer program is met as a
resource for the kids and theteachers. Yeah, they do provide
security or a presence in thebuilding, but really it's those
kids and building therelationship with the kids that
(19:57):
helps us investigate these anddo it quickly is because the
school resource officers get toknow the kids, and they build
those relationships, and they'rea resource. And that's what we
want. Enforcement is the lastthing we want to do in the
school. The first thing we wantto do is be a counselor and a
teacher.
Dr. Katie Collier (20:12):
Thank you so much for that. I've gotten to
see evidence of thoserelationships making a big
difference in our schools. Sowe're so thankful to the
Overland Park Police Department,Leawood Police Department, and
what, what you all do for ourstudents and families? Dan?
Dan Carney (20:29):
You know you said, you said that kids are safe in
schools, and that is, that'strue. That's true statistically,
that they're safe in schools,safer in schools than they are
at home, statistically speaking,but nevertheless, we continue to
attempt to reduce the risk ofharm to kids in schools every
(20:52):
day, and we continue to attemptto push that risk down to zero,
knowing we can never get there.
We can never get to zero risk.
But we continue to layer indifferent things, whether that
be physical security or whetherit be protocol personnel. We
continue to try to push thatrisk down, down, down. I don't
(21:14):
know if people know. We have 24total police officers that work
in Blue Valley Schools everyschool day, half of those are
Blue Valley campus officers withover 200 years of city police
experience under their belts,and the other half are school
resource officers provided bythe city. We have tried to
(21:37):
address learning points frompast school violence, and put
them into play here. You know,we just instituted a couple
years ago a program calledcrisis alert that allows every
single employee in our in our inour school district to lock down
a school immediately if they seea threat, if they, if they see
(22:01):
or, you know, respond to athreat that's occurring in our
schools, because communicationhas been such a huge problem in
past school shootings, wecontinue to layer these things
in to make them safer and saferand safer. But at the end of the
day, I think we need, we needparents help to solve this, to
really solve this problem. Weneed your help.
Dr. Katie Collier (22:23):
Chief Happer, thank you so much for joining us
today. Dan Carney, thank you forjoining us. Parents. We
appreciate your ongoingpartnership. Our goal is to
continue to provide safe schoolsevery day where students can
have great, wonderful,meaningful learning experiences,
a positive school experience. Weappreciate everyone's
(22:43):
partnership, and we look forwardto the next edition of Blue
Valley Unmuted. Have a greatday.
I think the beauty about our community in
(00:05):
the Blue Valley School Districtis that we can all work
together. You're really alwaysjust looking forward to just go
back to school, just to see thepride that people have in Blue
Valley School District yearafter year is so much fun to
watch. You can't find thisanywhere else. I am so thankful
we live where we live and canhave our children in the Blue
Valley school systems.
Dr. Katie Collier (00:29):
Welcome to Blue Valley Unmuted. We're so
thankful to have you with ustoday. I'm Dr Katie Collier. I'm
Blue Valley Schools deputysuperintendent and joining me on
this segment today is ourOverland Park interim Chief
Simon Happer and our director ofsafety and security for Blue
Valley Schools, Dan Carney,again, thank you so much for
(00:50):
being here. We want to talktoday about what we have
experienced across the nationand here in our own school
district, is this uptick inthreats against our schools, and
we really want to spend sometime today helping our parent
community understand theconsequences associated with
school threats. And we want tohelp our parents understand what
(01:14):
we do as a school district tokeep our schools safe. And
really we seek to be inpartnership with our parents
when it comes to school safety,but we're also in partnership
with our students. We have agreat history of our students
being partners with us, and wewant to continue to have our
students be partners with us. SoI am going to go ahead and start
(01:34):
with you. Dan Carney, can youexplain for us? Help our parents
understand if and when wereceive a threat against one of
our schools that might occur onsocial media, how do we process
that once we receive thatinformation?
Dan Carney (01:52):
Well, when we're notified of a threat, we we kind
of go into, say, like a redalert mode immediately, we want
to do a quick analysis of thethreat just to understand it,
understand what exactly it is,and then, first and foremost,
ensure the safety of anyone whohas been threatened, whether
(02:13):
that's the whole school, whetherthat's a specific student or a
group of students, obviously, ifschool is in session at the time
that may call for one responseversus if it's after school
hours. Either way, we're goingto get in touch with our local
police department, which most ofthe time is Overland Park,
because that's where themajority of our schools are, but
(02:35):
we do have schools in Leawoodand so on. So we'll get with our
partners and try to track downthe origin of the threat, talk
to any witnesses you know, kindof it basically just opens an
investigation. I think it'simportant to note that when a
threat occurs, if it'sdetermined that that meets the
elements of the statute forcriminal threat, that is a
(02:58):
felony and I'm not sure thatpeople know that, but you make a
threat, you try to put people infear by making a threat of
violence. That is a felony.
Dr. Katie Collier (03:09):
Chief Happer, I wonder if you can tell us, how
do you process as our partnersin law enforcement threats when
they're credible or not credibleto our schools?
Interim Chief Simon Happer (03:20):
So sure, we're looking right away
at the threat itself, and thenone of the important things that
we have is the school resourceofficers who are in your high
schools, your middle schools,and then working with the
district safety and securityteam to address and see if that
kid could be a threat and becredible. Generally speaking, we
go out and try to find if we cantrace down to where it came
(03:41):
from, we go and talk to thatindividual, talk to the parents,
obviously, and we're trying toget to the bottom of the threat.
Is it credible? Is it somethingthat could be carried out? Is it
something that just got passedon and along and along and
actually came from somewhereelse? So we're really trying to
find that one of the things thatwe do is we do have a good
relationship with a lot of thesocial media platforms and the
(04:04):
companies that run those to getinformation on those we can find
out possibly, where a threatoriginated. So we look into
that, and then obviously, ifit's credible, then we take the
appropriate action, as Dan said,it is a felony, and if we can
prove that, we're going to takethem and take them into custody
and take them out to thejuvenile and take an assessment
(04:24):
center and then let the districtattorney decide on charging
Dr. Katie Collier (04:29):
Oftentimes, when our teens are on social
media, they may think that thatcontent that they're sharing
back and forth between eachother is actually just between
them, their small group offriends, they think they may be
making statements that are justjokes. So I'm wondering, one,
(04:49):
what if something is just ajoke, as perceived by this
student? And secondly, shouldthey consider that when they're
on social media, that content isprivate?
Interim Chief Simon Happer (05:00):
You know, I'm going to say that
nothing you put on social mediaor on the Internet is private. I
know there's a belief thatSnapchat goes away, Snapchat
sees it. And one of the thingsthat we've seen this year is
that some of the social mediaplatforms are actually building
algorithms to look in forkeywords that would lead to
something that could be violenceagainst a school that comes up,
(05:22):
if it hits that, they're lettingus know. And I think that's
where you've seen some of theuptick locally is through those
sources. So we're having toinvestigate those so that
innocent thing you put outthere, whether it's a joke or
not, AI doesn't know it's ajoke. It just reads it and says,
those are the keywords we'relooking for, and then we get
notified of it.
Dan Carney (05:41):
I might add also that we may determine, and
actually most of the time, wedetermine, that these threats
are transient, or they're theyreally pose no real threat, but
making the threat is still acrime, correct? And so even
though you didn't mean it, eventhough it was a joke, there, may
be legal consequences to that,not to mention all of the other
(06:05):
consequences, such assuspension, expulsion from
school, losing friendships.
There's just a whole list of badthings that can happen as a
result of making a threat.
Dr. Katie Collier (06:17):
Certainly we want all of our students and all
of the adults that work in ourschools to feel safe in their
learning and work environmentevery single day. And so I'm
wondering, Dan, what shouldstudents do if they see
something online that theyinterpret as a threat to school?
(06:39):
Who should they report that to?
If a parent sees it, should theyshare that on social media to
make other parents aware that itlooks like there's a threat
against a school? Just whatshould we do?
Dan Carney (06:50):
Well, we've picked up on a little phrase that kind
of is very concise. It says,report, don't repost. When you
repost, you're keeping theproblem alive. You're keeping
the threat alive. That may betotally nonsense, but when you
repost you cause more angst, andif you just report it, then we
can get to the bottom of it. Thepolice department can get to the
(07:11):
bottom of it, but I would say ifyou see something, you feel it's
threatening, you can call thelocal police. It's probably the
best and quickest thing to do,especially if it's after school
hours. If it's during schoolhours, you still can call the
police department. You cancontact the school police
officers. We also if, if peoplewant to remain anonymous, we
(07:32):
have a Safe Schools Hotline,239-HELP. If you go to our
website, Blue Valley SchoolDistrict and click on the safety
tab, you'll find the SafeSchools hotline. You'll also
find the p3 tips app, whichanyone can use to report
anonymously. This is associatedwith the tips hotline.
Everybody's familiar with thatKansas City operates, and you
(07:53):
can report a threat there aswell. All those things I just
mentioned are answeredimmediately, you know, sending
an email at nine o'clock atnight to someone in the school
district may or may not getaddressed right away, because we
don't necessarily see our emailimmediately. So I think doing
one of those things is going toget immediate attention.
Dr. Katie Collier (08:15):
You know, our school principals go to school
to be school principals investedin the education of students.
What I'm wondering about is, howcan we help our parents
understand what qualifies ourprincipals to determine whether
or not a threat is of substanceor not when they experience a
(08:38):
report from a student or aparent? Is that working with our
local law enforcement, or is itstrategies they've been taught?
Can you help our parentsunderstand about how our
principals go about this?
Dan Carney (08:51):
Yeah, about a year and a half ago, we adopted a
threat assessment program calledthe Comprehensive School Threat
Assessment guidelines. This is aprogram that was developed
originally called the Virginiamodel. Now it's named
differently, but it's the samemodel that Dr. Dewey Cornell
from the University of Virginiadeveloped it. And basically what
it tries to do, very simpleform, is train principals,
(09:15):
counselors, schoolpsychologists, police officers
to kind of unwrap a threat, tomake a determination about
whether the threat is transientor substantive. So does it have
substance, or is it somethingthat is perhaps a joke,
something to garner attention?
You know, that kind of thing,that where the person really
(09:37):
doesn't pose a threat, whichagain, is what 90 something plus
percent of threats are. So allof our all of those people I
mentioned, have been throughquite a bit of training to learn
this program. It's kind of afive step program, and helps
them to unravel these threatsthat come in to understand them
better, to understand what's atthe heart of them, what might be
(10:00):
causing a student to make athreat, those sorts of things.
They spend a lot of time goingthrough scenarios and learning
how to do that. It's a programthat has been tested for
positive results. It's listed inthe National Registry of
evidence based programs.
Dr. Katie Collier (10:20):
I know our principals have taken that
training very seriously. All ofour staff that our
administrators, new toadministrative team, have access
to that training, and it's justreally been invaluable. Chief
Happer. I'm wondering, though,what happens when the police
department receives informationabout a threat and it's late on
(10:42):
a Sunday night and we'restarting school on a Monday, and
maybe families or students areaware of a threat and they want
to be able to go to schoolfeeling safe Monday morning.
What does the department do whenthose things happen late at
night or on a weekend?
Interim Chief Simon Happe (10:58):
Well, the first thing I want to make
sure and encourage everyone todo is to report them. A lot of
times, people look at things andthey go, Ah, I really don't want
to bother the police department.
It's our job. That's what wesigned up to do. So when we get
those officers, you know,generally, a street officer,
district officer, will get thatmay start looking into it.
Generally speaking, we're goingto call one of our sergeants and
(11:20):
our school resource either forthe north end of the city or the
south end, so either Blue Valleyor Shawnee Mission and St Thomas
Aquinas. And we're going to tryto find the SRO that would be
best to help us out with this.
Again, they've all had thetraining that Dan just talked
about, so we give themadditional training in being an
SRO and how to address thesethings. So we're going to get
(11:43):
them involved a they know theschools. So we're trying to get
the an officer involved whoknows the school, is aware, has
a relationship with the staffand the principal. Because a lot
of times we find the principalsyou know teachers in those
schools. They know these kids,and they know whether this, you
know, that's probably Johnnyjoking around, or, no, that that
(12:03):
doesn't sound like him. That's,that's, we need to do that so
it's looking into that. But,yeah, we, we take them all
seriously. There are none thatcome in and we just look at go,
eh? No, we, we're going toinvestigate it, because the last
thing we want is somebody comingto school, you know, bringing
their kids unsafe. One of thethings we do try to do is then
get that information out thatwe've investigated it and
(12:23):
whether it's true or not. Butwe're also going to work with
Dan and his team to maybe have alittle stronger police presence
around so if it's at a highschool, you know, or a middle
school, we're going to have alittle bit stronger police
presence around there, just tokind of calm the nerves of the
patrons of the school, the youknow, the families, so that
they're comfortable going toschool. But again, we're pulling
in whoever we need if we needdetectives. It doesn't matter
(12:45):
we're a 24 hour a day operation.
We call people in if we needthem. And, you know, I've never
seen one of our district officeror school resource officers, or,
you know, or Dan, not answer hisphone in the middle of the night
when we have one of these, andthat's generally when they come
in is when they're at home inthe evening and they're texting
and chatting and doing all thatstuff.
Dan Carney (13:05):
You know, I would just add on to that that is so
true, and we're so appreciativeof Overland Park Police, Leawood
police, that they do jump onthese in the middle of the
night. And I would say this, ifyour student makes a threat
online in the evening, afterschool hours, you can probably
expect a visit from the policedepartment that evening.
(13:28):
That is correct, Dan. We will,and that's the thing. You want
to get face to face withsomebody so you can see their
reaction, kind of see how it is,see if the parents understand
these things. We're alsochecking to see if it's a threat
they're going to shoot up aschool? Is there a means to do
that? You know, are there gunsin the house? Are those things?
Are they secure? That's one ofthe things we're really looking
(13:48):
at, is to build, to build thecase, but also to disprove the
case, if that's the the anglethis goes.
Dr. Katie Collier (13:56):
So we've talked about our parents, our
students, other communitymembers being partners with us
and reporting threats to us.
What advice can we give to ourparents who may have teens on
social media? How can we helpparents help their students from
engaging in something onlinethat would create really some
(14:18):
serious consequences for them?
Interim Chief Simon Happe (14:24):
Well, I think, I think the first thing
is to know what social mediayour kids have and what they're
doing on it, and take a lookevery once while, sit down with
them. Talk it. Don't make itaccusatory. Don't make it you
know, I got you, but it's a sitdown and just say, because one
of the things that a lot ofpeople don't know is there's a
lot of companies, besides theOverland Park Police Department,
there's private companies thatare doing a search of your
(14:45):
social media history, andthey're looking for things in
there, and they have companiesthat do that now, and they'll go
back and search. So when you'relooking for a job down the road,
and we find it, every once in awhile, we'll have an officer
that's liked something whenthey're 16, and, you know, it's
probably inappropriate, and sowe talk to him about it. It
doesn't mean you're out, but itdoes raise some, you know, it
raised some flags that we needto look into. But the biggest
(15:07):
thing I can say is parents needto really sit down and
understand what their kids aredoing online. You know, are they
liking jokes that areinappropriate, that could, you
know, have consequences down theroad? Are they bullying? I mean,
these kids are bullying eachother a lot online, whether it's
through texting, but a lot ofit's through social media, and
(15:27):
it's easy to do, because you canbe anywhere in the world and
bully somebody so you know, andthat's important for the parents
to know, because there's a lotof other things that parents
wouldn't even know their kidshaving a problem, but they might
be able to find out by sharingthat experience and again,
making it just, hey, you know,we're just going to go through
and talk about this. There's notconsequences, unless there's
something really bad there. Butyou know, just that building
(15:49):
that relationship and that trustwith your child.
Dan Carney (15:51):
We really do need parents help on this, this, this
problem. We've seen a, we'veseen a real uptick in the number
of threats since the school yearbegan, and it's it's causing
kids to be fearful. And we getreports of that from parents.
They email us, they say, I keptmy child home today because I
heard this. Heard about thisthreat. We have parents who say
(16:15):
that their kids are justgenerally afraid to go to
school. And I kind of look atthat is kind of collateral
damage from the from the threatitself, and I think that that is
a serious problem. I was lookingat this study done by Harvard
University. They have a Centeron the Developing Child, and
basically their studies showedscience, showed that early
(16:38):
exposure to persistent fear andanxiety and chronic anxiety can
have lifelong effects on brainarchitecture. In other words, it
can diminish a child's abilityto learn, and it can, it can
last across the lifespan to haveto deal with this chronic fear
and anxiety about, am I going togo to school and be harmed by
someone? So it is a serious,serious matter. And again, it's
(17:03):
not just that it's eating uppolice resources that obviously
is extremely important, becausethere's a lot of things out
there that really need policeintervention. But it's, it's
causing this, this kind of,it's, I think nationally, it's
causing this kind of temperatureof fear and anxiety around
schools, and it's just not not agood thing.
Dr. Katie Collier (17:24):
We want our students and our schools to feel
safe, connected, happy, andcertainly, we know thatwhen
students have a wide range ofemotions that can be
overwhelming, they are lookingfor opportunities and ways to
communicate that sometimes thatmay be communicated in an
(17:46):
ineffective way throughsomething on social media, but
we do want to remind our parentsand our students that we have
mental health teams in ourschools who are absolutely ready
and available To assist andsupport a student or a family.
Sometimes it's a matter of justtalking out a particular topic
(18:07):
or situation. Maybe it's theneed to have access to broader
resources. I know our studentshave access to our SRO officers,
our Overland Park officers thatare in schools that they make
connections with, that they cantalk to and process, and we can
help a student and a parent haveaccess to resources outside of
(18:27):
our school. So we certainly wantto remind everyone that those
things certainly are available.
I know our time is probablyabout running. Running up here,
I want to make sure I give youeach an opportunity. If there's
anything that you as we wind up,that you would really want
parents to know on this topic,certainly, our schools are safe,
right? While we've had an uptickin threats, we've seen that
(18:52):
locally and nationally. In BlueValley, we have many layers to
security, and our schools aresafe. We want to continue to
have our parents feel reallyconfident sending their children
to our schools every day. But isthere anything else on this
topic that you would want tomake sure you had, that you had
the chance to express before wewrap up today?
Interim Chief Simon Happe (19:12):
Yeah, you know, I think one of the
biggest things is, if a parentsees something, then say
something to us. If a studentsees something, say something
please, when you see thesethings, let us know we'd much
rather investigate something andfind it's not true than not be
able to investigate it andsomething happened. If you have
a question, call your schoolprobably has either a school
(19:34):
resource officer in it from thepolice department or from the
Blue Valley School Police. Andthat's one of the things. And
one of the other things I wantto say is to say is for people,
is that that school resourceofficer program is met as a
resource for the kids and theteachers. Yeah, they do provide
security or a presence in thebuilding, but really it's those
kids and building therelationship with the kids that
(19:57):
helps us investigate these anddo it quickly is because the
school resource officers get toknow the kids, and they build
those relationships, and they'rea resource. And that's what we
want. Enforcement is the lastthing we want to do in the
school. The first thing we wantto do is be a counselor and a
teacher.
Dr. Katie Collier (20:12):
Thank you so much for that. I've gotten to
see evidence of thoserelationships making a big
difference in our schools. Sowe're so thankful to the
Overland Park Police Department,Leawood Police Department, and
what, what you all do for ourstudents and families? Dan?
Dan Carney (20:29):
You know you said, you said that kids are safe in
schools, and that is, that'strue. That's true statistically,
that they're safe in schools,safer in schools than they are
at home, statistically speaking,but nevertheless, we continue to
attempt to reduce the risk ofharm to kids in schools every
(20:52):
day, and we continue to attemptto push that risk down to zero,
knowing we can never get there.
We can never get to zero risk.
But we continue to layer indifferent things, whether that
be physical security or whetherit be protocol personnel. We
continue to try to push thatrisk down, down, down. I don't
(21:14):
know if people know. We have 24total police officers that work
in Blue Valley Schools everyschool day, half of those are
Blue Valley campus officers withover 200 years of city police
experience under their belts,and the other half are school
resource officers provided bythe city. We have tried to
(21:37):
address learning points frompast school violence, and put
them into play here. You know,we just instituted a couple
years ago a program calledcrisis alert that allows every
single employee in our in our inour school district to lock down
a school immediately if they seea threat, if they, if they see
(22:01):
or, you know, respond to athreat that's occurring in our
schools, because communicationhas been such a huge problem in
past school shootings, wecontinue to layer these things
in to make them safer and saferand safer. But at the end of the
day, I think we need, we needparents help to solve this, to
really solve this problem. Weneed your help.
Dr. Katie Collier (22:23):
Chief Happer, thank you so much for joining us
today. Dan Carney, thank you forjoining us. Parents. We
appreciate your ongoingpartnership. Our goal is to
continue to provide safe schoolsevery day where students can
have great, wonderful,meaningful learning experiences,
a positive school experience. Weappreciate everyone's
(22:43):
partnership, and we look forwardto the next edition of Blue
Valley Unmuted. Have a greatday.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.