When Safety Meets Special Education: Threat Assessments and Suspensions
===

Aleia Mastroianni: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of SpecialEd, IEPs, 504s, Oh my: Conversations with DCSEAC. I'm Aleia Mastroianni, and today I'm joined by so many of my awesome board members.

Today I have with me Courtney Nangle.

Courtney Nangle: Hi

Aleia Mastroianni: I have Kelly Mayr.

Kelly Mayr: Good morning.

Aleia Mastroianni: I have Meredith Daley

Meredith Daly: and 

Aleia Mastroianni: I have Tashia White.

Tashia White: Hi there. 

Aleia Mastroianni: Today we're gonna talk about one that's a little challenging and hard, especially within our community, and that is threat assessments.

I wanted to get this group of parents together to talk about how it's a little bit different within the special needs community and what that can look like and how sometimes threat assessments can hit our kids far more than others. Starting with the concept that something that defines a disability is having unexpected behaviors, non-typical dysregulated behaviors.

And [00:01:00] so to the typical general ed person or teacher or community member, it might look really odd and it could be scary, especially if it includes: screaming or yelling or crying or throwing or things like that, which to people who don't live in our world, that's really scary and crazy to them. To those of us that live in our world, we're like, Hey, this is, this is part of a disability.

So in the school world, we call that a manifestation of a disability. When the behavior, what is triggering it or causing it is the disability. But it often could also lead to a threat assessment. Anyone wanna jump in? What have you guys seen with this? 

Kelly Mayr: Um, I'm happy to jump in. Whether it's a manifestation of a disability or not is a little bit subjective. And so one of my children had a threat assessment. Now, I would say because he has autism and ADHD [00:02:00] that saying impulsive things would be part of his disability. But the school did not agree. And so he did go through the full threat assessment system. During that I learned something that was surprising to me: the school resource officer, so the police officer assigned to our school can interview my child without notifying the parents ahead of time. And I explicitly asked what if he said, you need to call my mom, would you?

And they said, no. We have received guidance that says we are not to notify parents until after the assessment. Which was surprising to me and it felt like our, children don't have the same rights as adults in the legal system. Now, I will add some caveats to that. Now, when you drop your child off at a school they take on the defacto role as parent. The school is giving permission for the SRO to speak with the child. I will say if they say anything in that [00:03:00] meeting where they do not have legal representation or a parent and they're under 18, it cannot be used in a court of law.

They would redo the interview with a parent or lawyer present. So I did learn those things.

Aleia Mastroianni: I'm glad that you brought this up it was actually voted on that there is board policy that says specifically that parents do not need to be present or notified and within our community, this is incredibly problematic when you add neurodiversity because our children say all sorts of things. They say, they're very persuadable, I can think of children that I know who would be so terrified that they were in that room that they would just say whatever they thought they wanted them to say. I think that's a common problem. I know some children who would get incredibly more escalated because they felt trapped. I know kiddos who react with physical violence, which then would escalate this into a legal issue because they feel trapped. There's a lot of [00:04:00] vulnerability in our community. Do any of you guys wanna add and speak to that? Not to take us too 

Courtney Nangle: Last year, going through it personally with my son, when he was in his emotional state of mind and being on the spectrum and not really understanding what's going on it was scary for him, and he's asking for me, and they're not really giving answers as to why mom's not here? Why? Well, I want my mom, okay, he's gonna say whatever in that moment to get to me as quickly as possible. I remember being scared like. What did they just talk to my son? Like, how is this even possible?

How are they talking to my, he was not even nine at the time.

Tashia White: Yeah. And that brings up a question I have as far as, you said he's nine, or he's elementary, correct?

Courtney Nangle: Mm-hmm. Yes. You in grade school. 

Tashia White: So is it handled any differently across the different grade levels, the threat assessments? 

Kelly Mayr: Not really. I did ask them when I found out, 'cause my son was also nine, what is it with nine year olds? What, I could do to protect him. Now the IEP has to be followed. So if they needed, if they had [00:05:00] apraxia or they had something where they needed a communication device that would have to be provided. So the IEP still has to be followed. I said, can I write into the IEP that you cannot interview my child? They said, no, you cannot. But what they did say we could do was they could have someone, a trusted adult who works within the school. So like I could request that his special education teacher be present for that interview. I've run into this a few times, children will say whatever that they think will get them out of trouble.

As adults with fully functioning frontal lobes, we know they're actually just digging the hole deeper. They do not know that. When they try to justify actions, what they really don't know is they're giving the SRO cause. So it's a really vulnerable position to put our students in. We have run into that when the community gets wind of it, because students will go home and tell their parents pieces of it, and then the whole community blows up. Sometimes on social [00:06:00] media, sometimes they're just emailing the principal and it really can become very detrimental if not dangerous to our students.

And I see both sides. I see that the community is fearful. 

Aleia Mastroianni: Yeah. 

Kelly Mayr: You know, they are fearful. It is a really complicated issue, but we have to keep bringing it up 

Aleia Mastroianni: A hundred percent. I really appreciate that you brought up what you did, because you feel helpless.

You're like, oh my gosh, I, I don't have control over what's going to happen. My child is going to admit to anything, or they're going to be belligerent, and then they're going to suspect them because of that. They're in a fight or flight mode. They're scared, especially if they're talking with an SRO.

It's intimidating. And I learned from your situation specifically that I was like, well, what do we do? What do we do? And to all you parents out there, my recommendation, if this is a worry that you have, probably we all should. If we're writing IEPs, say in the event that my child needs to be interviewed by administration or an SRO, we [00:07:00] request that a trusted special education teacher, or you can do their counselor, their SLP, somebody who preferably the child has a relationship with, can be present.

Whether that's followed or not is a whole different conversation, but at least you as a parent can feel like, I can take at least this little step. One of the things I love to say constantly is go build those relationships before the incident happens. Build the plan before there is a crisis, and we don't usually think about it until there's a crisis and sometimes you can't plan ahead, but when you can, if you're writing IEPs and behavior intervention plans, try and put in there, Hey, in the event of an interview, I'd like XX X. 

Courtney Nangle: To piggyback on what you're saying, when we are talking about the planning aspect of it, that care team that is assembled, as a parent, you do have a voice in this.

You do have a say in who is part of it. My son was very involved in picking who he trusted and [00:08:00] who he wanted. So I highly encourage you if you are doing this as well, to figure out, okay, who do you trust in your child's school? Who does your child trust? Having these relationships, like you said, also helps. Reaching out to your local police department, they also have a care team.

Know what steps they follow, what questions, and then that way you can also build that relationship with them and they can keep you in the loop.

Kelly Mayr: It's a great point, is that, I try to say to my son, say less. Because our kids tend to ramble and they tend to keep adding more information and trying to figure out what nugget that person is looking for looking. Yes. Now I will share a story: the second time this happened, I figured out what was gonna happen and I was told well just, you know, drop 'em off at the front door and the assistant principal's just gonna grab him 'cause she's gonna talk to him. And this was the night before and it hit me, oh, I know what they're gonna do. This is gonna be a threat assessment. So I did not send him to school. So I emailed and I [00:09:00] said, my child will not be at school today. Go ahead and have the paperwork ready for his suspension. I'm happy to come in and sign anything if I need to. So they said, uh, well, we need to interview him. I'm like, well, you're welcome to call. 

Aleia Mastroianni: Yeah. Good for you. 

Kelly Mayr: And I put the phone on speaker. I did have a conversation with my son prior and said, you answer the question, you answer it to the best of your ability, and then you stop talking and you don't make things worse, like we went through all the different scenarios and how that could look worse if you say things that are not accurate. We had that whole conversation. The SRO called, I had it on speaker, and I was able to protect him in that way. I don't know if that is something that the school wants you to do, that is what worked for my family.

Aleia Mastroianni: You were able to, which is really nice. We don't do a lot of protecting or preparing our kids for these situations, which is why we wanna have this podcast because they do pop up, especially with security and safety being so present in everyone's mind and being incredibly [00:10:00] important. But where do we find the balance between security and safety and are we walking over special education or disability access? I wanted to bring up a little, a brief bit. This can look very different depending on the level of disability or cognitive ability that your child may or may not have.

And it does sometimes alter the school's response, even though I think technically they're like, we're gonna respond the exact way. I wanna bring it up because your child might fall into some of these areas. I have a child who is very affected and now that she has gained her verbal abilities, is verbal threats. And this is very common in the special needs community.

When they're distressed or wanting to avoid a situation, they will use verbal threats, but the way people respond to them can vary greatly, depending on your child's ability level. And so for my specific child, because she is so affected and what she's [00:11:00] saying is so ridiculous, we have done a threat assessment.

We have that documented in her IEP. But to give you an example, it's things like, I will cut your hands off with a knife. I will, I will blow up my house. I will never sleep in my house again. Yelling things like that. And. It's kind of silly and we know it, and because I know her so well, I know she wants to cut my hands off because she doesn't want me to change her clothes or she wants to blow her house up because I wouldn't let her go to McDonald's or something like that.

There's a, there's an understanding and I've built that understanding with her team and a lot of people in her school understand. But as a parent, I also understand that this is really abnormal behavior. It's very dangerous behavior for my child, as she gets bigger and is out in the community and it's the wrong police officer, the wrong person at Target, the wrong whatever.

It's very different from when she was little, and so it becomes dangerous behavior that we work on at school, but the school isn't [00:12:00] necessarily suspending her. This is not necessarily true for some of our students who appear more typical or have a higher cognitive ability, but have as limited resources to actually act out on the threat.

It's still a manifestation of the disability, but sometimes it's treated much more harshly.

Tashia White: And, well, I was gonna say, everyone's seeing things from a different lens, right? Say, there's an outburst like this at school and some, one of her classmates hears this and then takes us home and tells their parents.

And then that's how this chain reaction kind of gets outta control. And maybe that child, doesn't know your daughter and is scared. Right. And then how, how do we handle these situations? I think that's probably the other lens. 

Aleia Mastroianni: How things can escalate. If my daughter was in a classroom, that child might go home to their parent and be like, oh my gosh, there was a girl threatening to cut people with a knife. And Absolutely.

Tashia White: And then that parent might say, well, what do they do? And they said, oh, nothing. And they said what? Right. And then that's where it sounds like the school's not doing the [00:13:00] right thing. But they don't know. The fact.

Kelly Mayr: I think we are running into that a lot in the community, we are not really very transparent with what is involved in a threat assessment. And the community.

Like there was an example at one school where they said that a threat was made for a choir concert, and then the threat was deemed, what's the word? Credible threat.

Tashia White: And I did see that one on social media.

Kelly Mayr: Yes. Right? And your kid may, doesn't even go there, right?

And, and it was deemed not credible. And parents are like, why didn't they cancel the choir concert? Because they don't know what that means to be deemed not credible. So when your student meets with the SRO meets with this team and they go through the threat assessment, there's lots of different pieces to it. But it involves things like, talking to me, are there weapons in my home? So they go through all of these things. So when they say it's not a credible threat, it's really not a credible threat. But since the community doesn't know that, it feels very unsafe.

So I think we need to do a better job. I think we need to train parents on what threat assessments are and what they are not, what they look like, [00:14:00] what's involved in them, so that they can feel better.

Aleia Mastroianni: Keep your attention here 'cause we plan to do a podcast where we will connect with security leadership and maybe an SRO to try and add a little bit more transparency about what that threat assessment process looks like.

You also, if you'd like, they did a safety and security seminar, I'll add the link in our show notes, where leadership, including some BOE members, board of education directors where they're talking about security in our district. I'll link that below.

Courtney Nangle: I was actually really happy being a part of it because there were a lot of special needs parents in there and asking pretty great questions. So I think having these questions and asking the right people is going to get the answers that we all need. Maybe social media is maybe not our best bet, and I understand the frustrations. As a parent with multiple children with special needs, it's frustrating when you're hearing story after story and [00:15:00] you're dealing with a child that's having issues and then you're combating these stories while also trying to take care of your child. Trying to do what's best for my child, but also having to deal with the gossip mill. Oh, well did he do this or did he do that? And what is the school doing? I know it's hard to say to trust the school when we're not having all the answers that we wanna do. They could not stress enough to email the right person, and they were very open about who to email and what situation, and who is responsible.

They did have people across the board that you can reach out to and their email address, and they are more than willing to listen to you. 

Aleia Mastroianni: Yes. Social media is not a fantastic place for grace at all. 

Courtney Nangle: No. 

Aleia Mastroianni: I wouldn't recommend it

One topic I wanted to talk about that makes discipline, if you will, or consequences challenging within special education is that the consequence structure of suspension or being [00:16:00] removed from your classroom ends up reinforcing behaviors that we are trying to train out of them. Often behaviors are triggered or the antecedent, so what happened before that triggered the meltdown or the screaming or the whatnot, and often it is anxiety or lagging skills or confusion or sensory overload. There's many, many things that can be the antecedent. Our children have learned through repeat, repeat, repeat that if I swear at my teacher and throw my notebook, I get to leave.

Kelly Mayr: And so now I got to stay home because I made a threat. I don't like going to school anyway. Well this works out for me, so I think we need to be thinking out of the box and not be so cookie cutter. If they say this, this is what happens. Let's look at each individual student and what would be the best thing to reinforce the behaviors we're trying to reinforce. 

Aleia Mastroianni: I cannot agree more. I was on a team for [00:17:00] a long time called Suspension Prevention. Really where the answer comes is administrators, this is where you want to involve your administrators because they have a very set and somewhat rigid guideline of how they need to respond, especially to things that are threatening. Before the crisis happens, getting in with that administrator, talking with them and explaining, Hey, serial suspending my child is reinforcing the school refusal and the avoidance that he or she is already trying to do. And the reason they're screaming at their friend or tearing up their paper is because they're trying to get away and coming up with a more creative option to redirect and teach that behavior, which is why they're in special education, and learn skills to help them in those moments of stress.

Tashia White: What actions have you seen besides suspension?

Aleia Mastroianni: Schools that have thought more outside of the box?

Tashia White: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Aleia Mastroianni: What I've seen some schools do is in school suspensions, not separating your child from their services, but [00:18:00] having to earn their place back. So saying, Hey, by having this behavior, that means that we can't participate but it's like we will earn our way back.

There's letter writing. There's waiting until the moment is over and then sitting down and trying to walk through what happened for our kids that have a little bit more cognitive ability. When they're calm, you're able to sit down and go through it with them. Go through what was the antecedent, what do you think happened?

What happened in your brain? Can we make a plan for something else? This is intensive work, right? It's not like your general education classroom has the time to do this, but these are the supports that need to be in place to help the student understand, why did I have this behavior? I've made a mistake, but how can I learn a different behavior and not have the reinforcement of, hey, if I act out, I'll get suspended and I don't need to go to school for two days.

Tashia White: Like they could get caught in this loop, right? And then, and then just encouraging the behavior over and over.

Aleia Mastroianni: It is, and I would say that it happens far too [00:19:00] frequently because the standard consequence cycle for a general education student does not work for a student who is neurodiverse or has cognitive disabilities or has emotional dysregulation. 

They're not gonna put that consequence together, or say, oh, I'm so sad, I have a suspension on my record.

Know children who've had I am very sad to say this, like 25 suspensions in a school semester, and we can cover this in another podcast about how that should trigger a manifestation determination meeting.

But for those kiddos, why try? Why try it. It doesn't feel like anybody cares about them and they're just in a cycle of avoidance, avoidance, avoidance. And we wanna break that. So this has been a sit down with our coffee chit chat. This is actually what it sounds like when we board members talk to each other about our stories.

But I wanted to leave you with what can you do? If you are worried about, threat assessments or what your child may or may not do , their atypical behavior. The best thing to do, like always is communicate with your [00:20:00] school openly, communicate with your teachers.

Try and touch base with administration in a really positive way before you're in the middle of a massive crisis. And if your child is on an IEP, or even if they're on a 504, you can have a, what's called a BIP, a behavior intervention plan, and in there it will describe what your child's baseline behavior is, but it will also describe what their escalated behavior often looks like.

And this can be really helpful for the school because, I'll use my daughter for example, if she's making violent threats, they're like, oh gosh, you know, we have this written up, but this is, this is very frequent. But if she started doing something different, they'd be like, oh, hmm, this is, this is not what we're used to hearing or seeing.

So getting that documented is useful. 

Kelly Mayr: I will say you don't automatically get a BIP, so I requested an FBA, which is a functional behavior assessment for my child after his third suspension. And the autism team came in and they said, we don't see anything. 

Aleia Mastroianni: Wow.

Kelly Mayr: Right? And so he was denied a BIP and [00:21:00] I said, um. I don't see a ton of behavior either, but guess what? He's been suspended three times already. So sometimes that can be challenging as well. It's not, clear cut depending on what type of programming your student benefits from. So that was a little bit frustrating.

Aleia Mastroianni: Very important. I'm glad that you brought it up. Just because your child is on an IEP or especially a 504. The BIP or that functional behavioral analysis that then creates a behavior intervention plan is not automatically applied. It often is not triggered until your child's has behavior problems that have led to a suspension or something like that.

If your child's in the Affective Needs program and they do not have a BIP, that's something you really should connect with your team about. Every AN student should have one. They don't always, but they should. If you feel like this is a concern, you can reach out to your school and ask for that assessment, especially if you're seeing things like suspensions or being pulled out of class or room clears or threat assessment.

All the things that come [00:22:00] up when our children have atypical behavior. Another things that you can do is teach your child what the antecedent process is. So there is the anxiety triangle, and I'll add some resources for this in our show notes, but teaching them to understand their own brain. We do a much better job these days about trying to help kids understand their brain, understand fight or flight or the amygdala, or understand why they might feel out of control in certain situations, and helping them to understand that they are not bad, there is a physiological reason why their brain is reacting a specific way and why they can't make a rational decision in that moment.

Kelly Mayr: I think also encouraging them to advocate for themselves. And it's okay to say, I don't feel comfortable talking to you, or if you can include your child with the IEP saying I'm supposed to have a safe adult with me in this meeting. And in my case, that is my special ed teacher, or that is the person from the cafeteria, whoever it may be.

Giving them the ability to use their voice, I think can be really important depending on obviously the level [00:23:00] of students. 

Aleia Mastroianni: These are all things that you can do as we send our neurodivergent or disabled kiddos out into the world that doesn't always understand their behaviors.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below, or you can connect with us at info@dcseac.org, our Facebook page, our socials, we love to talk about it. We will have further discussions about behaviors and threat assessments. It's a much larger subject than we can cover in one podcast.

As always, guys, thank you so much for listening. Consider sharing our podcast. We'd love to reach as many of you as possible. We'll see you next time.