CHARLOTTE — A lawmaker in North Carolina introduced a new bill to standardize how and when parents are notified of threats or emergencies at local schools.
This comes in the wake of a Channel 9 report about shooting threats targeting five different Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools campuses.
Channel 9′s Evan Donovan has been covering this since the beginning and spoke with the lawmaker, who is also the mother of a CMS student.
State Sen. Woodson Bradley’s daughter goes to Ardrey Kell High School, so she was one of many parents who first found out about recent threats by seeing our stories.
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Now, Bradley wants to standardize how it’s done statewide.
“I want to be crystal clear, this is not a finger-pointing bill, this is a partnership bill,” Bradley said.
When we first spoke to Bradley after our investigation, she told us she had already been working on legislation to address threat notifications. This week, she introduced the “school transparency act.”
“It would be statewide. If a credible threat came in, obviously, the school contacts law enforcement first. Depending on whether there’s an active investigation going on, they would notify parents within the hour. If there was an active investigation, parents would be notified within an hour of arrest or as soon as the investigation is concluded,” Bradley said.
The bill requires parents to be notified by at least two methods, one of them being a phone call, whenever there’s a “high-level emergency.” The bill leaves that up to school districts to define.
Bradley says new policies already implemented by CMS would meet that particular requirement.
Donovan got clarification from CMS on Friday. The district says its “threat communication process map” and “communication matrix for threats” were newly created in response to February’s threats.
They show a high-level threat toward a class or school would require notification to the whole school. It would come as an urgent alert, delivered through the ParentSquare app, email, and by phone.
“And, after an emergency, the school has to furnish a report: what they found, where it came from, what they did, how they made everything better. And that’s really gonna start bringing this conversation together,” Bradley said.
The bill also required districts to file an end-of-year report listing the number of threats, lockdowns, and evacuations.
Districts that don’t comply could be fined up to $5,000. That money would go into a new school security fund for use statewide.
Several days after this story initially aired, CMS said it supports elements of Sen. Bradley’s bill, but noted some provisions may be difficult to achieve.
CMS said in its statement: “Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is committed to maintaining the highest standards of safety and transparency for our students, staff, and families.
We are supportive of many aspects of Sen. Bradley’s bill, as it aligns with the comprehensive safety protocols and communication practices we already have in place. In fact, with our enhanced communication protocols and matrix, our district goes above and beyond many of the proposed requirements.
That said, there are a few provisions in the bill that raise practical concerns. Specifically, the requirement to notify families within an hour of a threat may be challenging to implement, as threats can arise at all hours of the day and night. Our safety and security teams work around the clock to assess and respond to potential threats. However, ensuring accurate information and collaborating with law enforcement before communicating with families is a critical part of our process, which may occasionally take longer than an hour.
Overall, we share the bill’s goal of prioritizing safety and transparency. Our district remains committed to keeping families informed and continuously strengthening our safety protocols to protect our students and staff.”
See the CMS Threat Communications Process at this link.
See the CMS Threat Communications Matrix at this link.
The bill was just referred to its first committee this week.
(VIDEO: 14-year-old charged with making mass violence threats against Union County school)
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