$2 million Justice Department grant to MU will help rural districts improve school safety

A $2 million federal Justice Department grant to the University of Missouri will help 26 rural school districts in Missouri improve safety.

The three-year grant will be implemented at the start of the 2023-24 school year for the districts.

The grant's primary investigator is Keith Herman, Curator's Distinguished Professor in the MU College of Education and Human Development.

"We did some surveys related to threat assessments and we found that rural districts were under-resourced," Herman said.

The project uses already existing technology developed by a private company to monitor social media posts, text messages and emails while students are on districts' Wi-Fi. Consent is obtained when students log on to Wi-Fi, Herman said.

"I think the technology itself is pretty intuitive," Herman said. "It quickly identifies threats to self and to others. This technology just taps into that. It immediately alerts school personnel."

As part of the grant, school personnel will receive training on best practice in threat assessment and suicidality when a threat is detected, he said.

Is there a danger of misinterpreting potential threats, of crying wolf?

"That's the purpose of the follow-up," Herman said. The grant project will use a proven system developed by the University of Virginia.

"It's pretty much a flow chart, if this happens, take this action," Herman said.

It minimizes the potential of over-responding to a minor threat or under-responding to a major threat, he said.

It's somewhat a drawback that the technology can only monitor posts students make while logged on to a district's WiFi, Herman said.

"It won't capture all possible threats that happen outside of school," Herman said.

But it can still catch a lot, he said.

An example is a student taking a screenshot of another student's post outside of school, then logging onto the school's Wi-Fi, he said.

In a recent incident in Virginia, a 6-year-old shot his teacher. There are allegations that the school administration disregarded warnings.

Researchers will measure their success at the end of the three years, Herman said.

"We will monitor if threats are being made and averted," Herman said. "We will also measure student bullying and if students feel safe at school."

Herman is co-director of the Missouri Prevention Science Institute, and the National Center for Rural Health, co-developer of the Boone County Family Access Center of Excellence and a board member for the Boone County Schools Mental Health Coalition.

"My overall goal is to create nurturing environments for students to thrive and safety is at the foundation of a nurturing environment," Herman said in a news release.

Roger McKinney is the Tribune's education reporter. You can reach him at rmckinney@columbiatribune.com or 573-815-1719. He's on Twitter at @rmckinney9.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: University of Missouri gets $2M grant to boost safety in rural schools