The Grande Yellowhead Regional Division is continuing to work towards improving safety and security for its schools and students. The latest effort in this regard has come by way of threat assessment training.

Last month several teachers and administrators — including Jasper Elementary School principal Raymond Blanchette-Dube — attended a two-day introductory session that taught them how to recognize threats and concerning patterns of behaviour.

“It was definitely worthwhile,” said Blanchette-Dube. “It makes you stop and think what could be a problem in the community.” 

The GYRD staff was trained by two men with significant experience in threat assessment. Dr. Kevin Cameron, who heads the Canadian Centre for Threat Assessment and Trauma Response, led the sessions. Cameron led the teams that established threat assessment protocols in Columbine, Colorado and Taber, Alberta, after fatal school shootings in both communities. He has since been in the vanguard of the establishment of threat assessment as a practice throughout North America.

For the GYRD, training local staff in these techniques was a priority simply because the division wanted to keep pace with other school jurisdictions in Alberta, according to spokesperson Nicole Merrifield.

“It’s very important that people understand that this is not happening because there is any greater concern,” she said. “There have been no increases or incidents in the GYRD.”

Threat assessment involves tracking potential sources of threat to school facilities as well as individuals and, ideally, preventing the threat from becoming a grim reality.

“Nobody just snaps,” said Merrfield. “You can see the evolutionary process towards serious violence, so threat assessment teaches people to look for these changes in behaviour and escalation of behaviour and how to track that evolution.”

Every school in the division had at least one staff member attend the first training weekend. These individuals are now responsible for training the other teachers in their schools using the “lead teacher” approach, said Merrifield.

“The goal is to have all of the teaching staff, administrators and support staff aware of what to do,” she said.

The lead teachers will also sit on community-wide threat assessment teams that incorporate the local RCMP detachments and municipal social service providers.

“It can be a good way to share information on background, behaviour and the root causes,” said Merrifield. “Threats always need to be addressed, but to what extent is the question.”

As these teams are formed, the schools are obliged to give students and parents what is known as “fair notice”, she added. This is due to the fact that threat assessment teams may use personal information protected under the province’s Freedom of Information Protection Act (FOIP), but only in cases of emergency or legal necessity.

The capacity to share information through the assessment teams is vital in rural communities, Merrifield said.

“One of the major concerns in our communities is that there aren’t a lot of RCMP officers stationed there,” she said. “If there is an incident, there’s not going to be a SWAT team there in five minutes, so our teachers and staff have to be able to handle those situations.”

Jasper’s community team model should serve the various partners well in the creation and functioning of a threat assessment team, said Blanchette-Dube.

“We already know the key contacts and we know that it makes sense,” he said. “In many ways, we already have this in place.”

Team members from all organizations will attend a second level of training in December of this year, intended to firmly establish protocols for monitoring and reaction in each community. This training, and the threat assessment program in general, is part of a wider emergency preparedness plan that the GYRD is developing as a priority in 2006-2007.