Florida schools to implement new threat management system to help identify concerning behaviors

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - It's been more than five years since 17 lives were lost in the Parkland school shooting. It led to the creation of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission to better assess school threats and prevent mass shootings. 

Beginning January 1, Florida schools will implement a new threat-management system.

How to identify concerning behavior and stop it before it becomes a school threat is the question Florida lawmakers hope the state's new threat-management system will help answer.

"It is going to happen again. It's gonna. History tells us that," MSD Commission leader and Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Tuesday in Tallahassee. "The question is when and where, but the ultimate question is what are we doing differently today to drive a different outcome than what we were doing previously. That's the real question."

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At the beginning of the new year, Florida schools will stop using a national threat assessment system called the "Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines" and switch to a new threat-management system known as "The Florida Model."

Under the new model, threat management teams will be at every school which must include a teacher, an administrator, a law-enforcement officer and a mental-health professional. When a behavior incident occurs with a student, the team must prepare an assessment report, which includes a 50-page intake form with questions to ask the student and their parents to probe for potential targets, access to weapons and history of violence. 

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The report will then be submitted to a statewide portal every district has access to. That way if a student transfers districts the new district won't be in the dark about the student's past behavior.

Sheriff Gualtieri spoke to members of the House Education Quality Subcommittee Tuesday about the new system. He said in the case of the Parkland school shooting there was a history of concerning behavior, but all the dots were never connected which is something the new system will help do.

"We're trying to at the earliest possible stage identify those concerning behaviors. We don't want them to become threats. If it's already become a threat it's gone too far. We got a problem, so we want to identify it early on," Gualtieri said.