Ohio’s Comprehensive and Multidisciplinary Approach to Behavioral Threat Assessment

The Ohio Department of Education proposes to implement Ohio’s Comprehensive and Multidisciplinary Approach to Behavioral Threat Assessment. The purpose of the project is to implement and expand training and coaching for Ohio’s school-based, multidisciplinary behavioral threat assessment teams and provide professional development opportunities for Ohio’s behavioral threat assessment trainers. Ohio will build upon its regional behavioral threat assessment training approach by securing contracts with educational services centers across the state to train and coach behavioral threat assessment teams serving Ohio’s K–12 schools. The project activities include using the evidence-based Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines model, which provides behavioral threat assessment teams with steps to conduct an assessment, including the use of a decision tree that allows teams to resolve most nonserious, transient threats and that reserves more extensive assessment and intervention for more serious, substantive threats. Trainers will use the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines model to train new multidisciplinary behavioral threat assessment teams, provide coaching, and facilitate refresher training to existing behavioral threat assessment teams. The project proposes securing an expert Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines trainer to lead a community of practice for Ohio’s behavioral threat assessment trainers. The department will contract with an evaluator to measure the project’s performance. The project’s expected outcomes include strengthening Ohio’s multidisciplinary behavioral threat assessment teams’ knowledge and skills in threat assessment.