BATON ROUGE, La. — The Center for Safe Schools, a division of the Governor's Office Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, plans to prepare teachers and students to take on any emergency, according to WBRZ.
Director of GOHSEP, Jacques Thibodeaux, said school safety is one of the programs that falls under one of the division's five provisions, "it's under security and interoperability here at GOHSEP".
Our partners at WBRZ spoke to Trevis Thompson who is in charge of the center. He said the programs they hope to implement "will cover everything from flooding to school shootings and ones that are tailored specifically to Louisiana schools."
Thompson said Louisiana has a number of online threats taking place and there is "still the threat of violence and harm to self whether it be suicide or threat to another person on those campuses," he said.
He said a large portion of what the center is seeing is average everyday discipline concerns, he told WBRZ.
According to our partners, Thompson said using different strategies to manage student safety could help prevent instances like the "rash of school threats happening in the capital area now."
"We're moving beyond just your regular threat risk and vulnerability assessments and into behavioral threat assessments. That's something for the future for the center."
GOHSEP said they are still in the process of developing the department and hiring staff.
"We're in the early processes of growing this program and it's going to be really beneficial to all of those 64 school superintendents and all of those charter schools," Thibodeaux told WBRZ.
The center is working on securing a grant that will help fund program implementation in schools this spring.
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