'Textbook' response

More than ever, schools respond to the threat of violence with urgency — taking all tips seriously — a protocol that safety experts say might have prevented tragedy at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in Staunton.

State police have charged two teenagers in a plot to kill students and faculty at the school. Tipped by administrators Sept. 24, police responded by working through the night and in following weeks, aided by school staff, said Lt. Joe Rader, investigations supervisor for the state police central division.

“I think the parents who send their students to us have a lot of faith in us and believe we’ll act expediently,” school Superintendent Nancy Armstrong said Wednesday. “Lt. Rader and his people have always been so wonderful to work with ... the situation was dealt with.”

Police and school officials refuse to describe the nature of the alleged threats or how exactly information came to their attention.

Kenneth Trump, president of Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, said school violence is increasingly prevented when students come forward with information, a result of an “intense effort by administrators to create a culture where students do come forward to report information.”

“The fact that someone else who had information reported it in a timely manner and law enforcement officials acted in an expedient way ... is a textbook manner of how these types of incidents should be handled,” said Trump, who teaches crisis management to school officials across the country.

“The number one lesson from all the shootings ... for school officials and law enforcement officials is that all threats need to be taken seriously and handled in a timely manner,” Trump said. “The best way for police and a school to learn about [threats] is from other students who have knowledge of it. In a majority of incidents there was some early warning sign or some information that was out there.”

Rader said the unnamed teens, from Augusta County and Arlington, planned to attack a dorm in late October and that police were able to identify some potential victims. Rader would not describe the plans, saying only that the suspects “talked a lot about what they were going to do.”

“The greater the amount of planning and preparation for carrying out a particular act, the higher is the risk attributed to the threat,” Trump said, adding that advanced plans usually include specific target dates before which attackers gather tools and pick attack methods.

Armstrong said school officials notified students and families by phone and then by letter. She said campus security was involved with the police investigation. School security officials declined to comment.

Rader said the hearing-impaired suspects had prior discipline problems at the school and had been dismissed. The teens are scheduled for a hearing Monday. They are not in custody. The charges against the teens, conspiracy to murder two or more people, were filed this month in Staunton Juvenile and Domestic Relations court.

Trump said school violence investigations continue to evolve, and now routinely include searches of computers, online profiles and text messages, in addition to traditional home searches. Police methods in this case could come to light in court.

“The good news is, school and police officials have become much more adept at following these best practices, [but] there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. The training and the protocols and the crisis planning has to be ongoing,” Trump said. “We don’t want parents afraid to send kids to school ... or everyone looking for a conspiracy around every corner, but at the same time we want to have that heightened sense of awareness.”

VSDB, established by the Virginia General Assembly in 1838, educates deaf and blind students ages 3 to 21. The East Beverly Street campus includes four dormitories. In April 2007, the General Assembly voted to allocate $71.3 million to the school.