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A proposal to establish an anonymous way for parents, school staff and students to report threats to school safety unanimously passed the state Senate on Wednesday and goes to the House for further consideration.
The proposed Safe2Say Act would require the attorney general to administer it and to create procedures for anonymous reporting of unsafe, potentially harmful, dangerous, violent or criminal activities in schools.
Some local schools already have a similar service that is used by contracting a national hotline. In the spring, four districts in Blair County contracted the Safe School Helpline that receives anonymous reports and contacts police, crisis professionals and school staff depending on the immediacy of the report.
Altoona Area spokeswoman Paula Foreman said the district had less than a dozen calls to the hotline since March 1.
While districts already have access to hotlines, Sen. John H. Eichelberger Jr., R-Blair, said he believes one of the benefits of the Senate's proposed Safe2Say program is that it would be administered through the Office of the Pennsylvania Attorney General. He said the reports may be more accurately tallied in the state's system for tracking violent crimes at schools.
"After my questions to the Secretary of Education at this year's budget hearings, we learned that the state's current system of tracking violent incidences is unreliable because school districts fail to report incidents. This news brings into question their handling of reports of violence in general. Safe2Say ensures some degree of reliability because it will be overseen by the Attorney General," Eichelberger wrote in a statement.
"As we look more deeply into preventing mass shootings, bullying that leads to student suicides or the many other acts of violence that occur at schools every day in Pennsylvania, we need a better way to protect children immediately and we need accurate information to formulate good public policy; this new program should help do both," he wrote.
The Safe2Say Program is modeled after the Safe2Tell program that was created in Colorado in 1999 after the Columbine tragedy, according to a legislative memo. Since its enactment, at least five other states have adopted similar programs, and Florida is currently working with the Colorado Safe2Tell office to set up a tip line there.
Dolores McCracken,
president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, on Wednesday issued a statement after the Senate approved the proposed "Safe2Say" act.
"Pennsylvania's teachers and education support professionals strongly believe prevention and early intervention is a very important part of preventing tragedies like the recent school shootings in Texas and Florida," she said. "This legislation would create an enormously valuable resource for Pennsylvania's schools, and we commend state senators for passing it today."