Georgia lawmakers won’t move forward with a proposed statewide school safety database that collects information on students who may commit violence.
Last month, state House Speaker Jon Burns proposed House Bill 268, a school safety bill that in part included the creation of a database that collects student disciplinary, mental health, and law enforcement information as a means to mitigate school violence, AP reports. The information would then be immediately transferred to critical school administrators, mental health counselors, and law enforcement within a few days of a child arriving at a new school.
The push to share information was motivated by the belief among many that September’s Apalachee High School shooting may have been prevented had the school district known of the warning signs displayed by the shooter prior to the attack. A Jackson County sheriff whose office interviewed the boy and his father in 2023 about online school shooting threats made by the teen said his then-school district was not notified of the investigation and therefore the information was not forwarded to Barrow County Schools when the boy transferred there just two weeks before the attack. The boy’s grandmother has also reported her grandson had a history of mental health struggles but that she was unable to get him the help he needed.
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“We know that the failure to transfer and share information regarding the student accused of this horrendous act played a role in the events that unfolded that day,” said Burns, who is a Republican.
The proposed bill received opposition from both Democrats and Republicans who said the database would create a permanent stigma with no due process that would disproportionately target minority groups, according to ABC News.
“The reason it wasn’t going to fly was pushback from all points of the political spectrum that worried about their child being stigmatized just for an accusation or an uncorroborated complaint,” said Republican Senator Bill Cowsert.
Updated Georgia School Safety Bill Removes Threat Management Team Requirement
On Thursday, House and Senate lawmakers unveiled a compromised version of HB 268, which unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary committee. In addition to the database, the new proposed bill also removes a requirement that all school systems set up formal threat management teams to evaluate whether students may commit violence, an approach that is widely recommended by many national school safety experts. The Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency currently offers training for establishing threat management teams. House Education Committee Chairman Chris Erwin said he is hopeful schools will voluntarily adopt the model.
“I think there is a knowledge out there of the importance of planning and preparing already in schools,” Erwin said. “So having a full model structure for the state isn’t as important as maybe we once thought it was.”
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The bill would still require law enforcement agencies to report to schools when a child has threatened harm to someone at a school. However, those reports aren’t mandated to become part of a student’s educational record and therefore would not be guaranteed to travel with a student if they transfer to another school district.
The bill would also mandate quicker transfers of records when a student enters a new school, create at least one new position per school district to help coordinate mental health treatment for students, and set up a statewide anonymous reporting system.
