I disagree it is one of the issues and it was done in two major shootings where I believe in Parkland or sandy hook the shooter came to his mother's classroom and killed her and shot the students. It was known of his mental issues and the mother purchased the guns for him knowing this. The school had the shooter as a student hiding him in lower grades because his mother was a teacher.
again by law, you must maintain confidentially of a person who s known to be a psychopath where the public school system all have a psychologist and trained counselors to identify these issues. The Law is flawed. and needs to be addressed. The confidentially of the student can be kept as he or she is removed from the school setting and not allowed to return without documented help.
Schools can refer kids to psychologists, we do all the time, and we see many, many kids with emotional issues that get referred.
If the psychologist were to discover something they think needs to be referred to the FBI then there are laws that govern that. But you have to remember you are dealing with minors and in most cases there are no crimes, only thoughts, acting out in class, and other warning signs. If kids and parents don't trust you to keep the information confidential then you will have a number of issues.
1. For every killer you may discover beforehand (highly theoretical) you will probably damage or destroy 100 kids.
Lawsuits will proliferate as over zealous do gooders slander all kinds of kids.
Parents will pull kids from the public school.
There has to be both trust and protection for minors to go to school. If I, as a teacher, had wanted to make a federal offense out of every insult, or threat I heard teaching high school it would have been daily referrals to the FBI. Since there were 40 teachers in my school just multiply my 1-2 referrals by 40. Since this was only one very small school in a huge school system you can probably put at least 2 0's after that. Somewhere around 1,000 referrals to the FBI from NYC high schools per day.
How do you think parents are going to feel about you referring their kid to the FBI because he said he was going to kill Tyrone for taking his book bag and hiding it?
On the other hand no teacher would dare not to refer these threats because 30 other kids heard it and if anything does happen in the future you will lose your job.
Yes, psychologists and social workers do work alongside the school, but most people associate "schools" with teachers and educators. Teachers and educators should simply refer the kids to a social worker or psychologist. If after careful evaluation a mental health professional felt they needed to make a referral to law enforcement then so be it. Putting the onus on schools is, speaking as a teacher who worked in a inner city public high school, idiotic.
Our primary mission should be to teach, not to be law enforcement. Obviously, if we see something alarming (and I probably did see alarming things 5-10 times throughout my entire career) then those should be written up and referred to the authorities to investigate.
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