School Safety Reporting Advances
Lawmakers gave first-round approval March 11 to a bill that would broaden an existing school safety pilot program.
Legislative Bill 322, sponsored by Gothenburg Sen. Matt Williams, would require the state Department of Education to establish a statewide, anonymous reporting system to support threat assessment teams with the goal of reducing violent incidents.
The reporting system — to be named the Safe2HelpNE report line — would allow students, school staff, parents and community members to report information about concerning behavior or possible harm to people or property anonymously and free of charge by telephone, mobile app, website or email.
“National statistics show that in most school incidents — in fact (in) over 80% of violent school incidents — someone has leaked the information prior to the actual incident,” Williams said. “Safe2HelpNE will give Nebraska schools a tool to receive that information and safely help someone before a tragedy occurs.”
He said the bill is modeled after a successful pilot program in Douglas County that logged 470 reports including suicide threats, drug use, bullying, mental health issues and threats against property. He said that 81% of the resulting contacts were diverted away from law enforcement interaction. Similarly, information provided through the report line under LB 322 would go directly to individuals trained in crisis management, Williams said, rather than directly to law enforcement. The report line would be available to any public or nonpublic school that has a threat assessment team and maintains a current list of contact information for at least five team members designated to receive alerts from report line staff 24/7.
LB 322 would appropriate $899,000 in general funds for the reporting system in fiscal years 2021-22 and 2022-23. The bill includes intent language that the Legislature would fund the system for 10 years. After that time, the department would report cost-benefit data and recommendations to the Legislature regarding the continued viability of the report line.”
Following the 35-4 adoption of an Education Committee amendment that made a series of technical changes, senators advanced LB 322 to select file on a 33-5 vote.
The Unicameral Information Office is operated by the Clerk of the Legislature. Find additional coverage at update.legislature.ne.gov.
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