Locke Outlines School Safety Program Governor To Pitch Plan To Legislature, Estimates Cost At $10 Million To $15 Million A Year

Gov. Gary Locke said Wednesday he wants to earmark tens of millions of dollars for school safety next year.

The money would be in addition to normal education funding.

“Keeping our children safe means school must be a place to learn, and never a place to fear,” he told Spokane educators, parents and students gathered at Roosevelt Elementary.

Locke said he plans to present his School Safety Initiative to the 2001 Legislature. He has yet to work out an exact cost for the proposed legislation, but said that it is intended to augment programs enacted last year that provided $23.6 million for alternative school programs, security personnel, teacher training to deal with disruptive students, safety planning and prevention and intervention grants.

Roughly, though, the new effort might cost $10 million to $15 million per year, he said.

“We cannot let up our guard. We cannot become complacent. We can always do more,” he said.

His plan would:

* Establish an office called The Washington Center for School Safety, under the state school system, that would help school districts develop safety policies and procedures.

* Require every school district to write a comprehensive safe schools plan emphasizing prevention, intervention, crisis response and post-crisis recovery.

* Have schools conduct “all-hazard” drills and safety reviews every two years.

* Require school districts to adopt policies for controlling bullying and harassment of students by other students.

* Create a statewide safety hotline so students can anonymously report concerns or fears of violence or harassment. Locke said that while some districts, including Spokane, have already implemented hotlines, doing so is simply too expensive for smaller districts.

* Conduct mental health evaluations for students arrested for threatening or assaulting other students or teachers. Evaluations now are conducted only for students arrested for bringing firearms to schools.

The legislation also would increase funding already provided to improve traffic safety near schools and reconvene the Youth Safety Summit Advisory this fall to assess school safety progress.

In 1998, Locke and state schools Superintendent Terry Bergeson assembled more than 400 youths, parents, teachers, police and community leaders for the first Youth Safety Summit to discuss safety issues and recommend ways to prevent violence.

At a roundtable discussion Wednesday with area educators and public safety officials after his address, Locke noted that Spokane School District 81 has already implemented many of the statewide school safety proposals, including the safety audits, policies and plans, and a safety hotline.

“I wish we could just bottle up what we have here and send it around the state,” he said.

Spokane Superintendent Gary Livingston took the opportunity to tell Locke about one of the district’s pressing concerns - dealing with mentally ill students who may pose a safety risk in classrooms.

“Their therapeutic needs are greater than their educational needs,” he said.

The district has started a pilot program this school year called Family Connections whereby violent mentally ill students are separated from the general student population and taught by a team consisting of a teacher and several mental health professionals.

The program is expensive - about $500,000 per year just for staff. Livingston said later that he hopes the governor will consider legislation to fund the program.