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Program promotes school safety in Sisters
By Jim Cornelius

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Fears about school safety hit close to home in recent weeks, with the arrest of a Mountain View High School student for allegedly plotting to murder a teacher and fellow students.

Scott Shelton, who serves as Sisters' School Resource Deputy, acknowledges that threats and school violence can happen anywhere, but he considers Sisters schools to be safe.

"Schools are still, statistically, one of the safest places in this country," Shelton said. "And Sisters schools, I would say, are average."

The Sisters community, however, is above average in the level of involvement with schools and youth, according to Shelton.

"There's a large amount of interaction between adults and youth in this community," Shelton said. "That, in itself, creates trust. Those are protective factors that a lot of communities don't have."

The willingness of students to come forward and tell trusted adults if they suspect an imminent threat of violence is critical in preventing school shootings, Shelton noted.

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In a recent school shooting near San Diego, many students heard the alleged shooter talk about his plans, yet no one came forward. In the Bend incident, a friend of the accused plotter told his mother what was going to happen.

"Breaking the code of silence among the students is the linchpin of the system," Shelton said.

That code of silence, which may seem perverse to adults, is not so hard to understand if youth are recognized as having their own culture, to some degree separate from the larger community.

"Law enforcement has its own 'code of silence,' where you begin to trust within your peer group," Shelton said. "Youth are very similar. They want to handle their own problems without an outside source telling them what to do."

That's not necessarily a bad thing, Shelton observed.

"We've got to allow the kids to sort through some of these problems," he said.

But when "problems" threaten to explode into acts of deadly violence, students need to tell someone with the authority to act.

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Shelton noted that potentially threatening situations in Sisters schools have been defused by teachers, students and law enforcement officials paying attention to students at risk of committing dangerous acts.

"We have taken kids from Sisters (schools)," Shelton said. "Those children have had appropriate mental health counseling and they are no longer a high risk because of that.

"That's the way the system's supposed to work."

However, Shelton emphasized, there is no "profile" of a student who is going to act violently and no system can guarantee that it will pick up all "at-risk" students before they act.

"The system is not infallible," the deputy said. "There's always that percentage of kids that we could miss."

The Safe Schools Alliance, formed in Deschutes County in the wake of the fatal school shooting at Thurston High School in Springfield, is an effort to make "the system" as effective as possible.

The alliance is composed of school administrators, law enforcement personnel, district attorneys, mental health professionals and juvenile justice authorities.

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It is coordinated through the local Education Service District.

Safe Schools Alliance members evaluate school security and have evolved protocols for handling potential threats.

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