Born with a traumatic brain injury, he’d been diagnosed in kindergarten with a serious emotional disability and severe ADHD. Stuck at home during the early months of the pandemic, his mental health declined.

That fall he was briefly admitted to a psychiatric hospital after threatening to hurt himself — just after he started seventh grade at Sobesky Academy, a public school in a suburb of Denver. While at the hospital, he got into a fight with another resident his age, and the facility pressed charges for felony assault, according to a later state investigation.

The hospital notified the school. On Sept. 18, Richmond received an email from the Jefferson County School District: AJ was suspended while the district evaluated his risk of violence, a formal process known as a behavioral threat assessment.

AJ spent the next eight months out of school with limited virtual instruction, while his mother argued with the district that his rights as a student in special education were being violated in the name of school safety.

“My son has always really liked school because he really does like that interaction with his peers and other children his age,” said Richmond. “So taking him out of that network, it really does hurt him.”

Threat assessment teams — typically teachers, mental health providers, and law enforcement officials — use specific protocols designed to pinpoint emerging or imminent threats and stop violence before it happens. When teams use these protocols correctly, proponents say, schools are safer and the school environment is more tolerant. Some research supports this view, but there’s no evidence to date that use of the protocols prevents school shootings. And advocates say the process disproportionately targets students already at risk of not succeeding in school. Students in special education, in particular, are more likely than their peers to face a threat assessment, and some have been denied protections they are owed under federal law.

Read the full article about school safety and disability rights by Steven Yoder at The Hechinger Report.