Newport school officials estimate that attendance for Saturday classes was down to 65 percent That has not been Jim Whealon's experience. As superintendent of schools in Anaconda, Montana, he tried zero tolerance. Threats this year were still so frequent that officials lost count. One answer doesn't fit all situations. The one answer gets you into trouble pretty quickly.
Some experts warn that punishment that is too harsh can be counterproductive.
Larry Ankrom, chief of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, said children will not tell on other students if they think their classmates will be treated unfairly. According to Ankrom, who helped formulate an FBI model for assessing threats by pupils, schools need a team approach and a plan for assessing threats, not reacting to them. The other side of handling the problem is recognizing that not all threats are equal, nor should they be handled the same way. The FBI's assessment model, which was made available to schools online in September, lists factors to consider in sizing up the seriousness of a threat. In Newport, where the stall walls came down, the principal of the 750-student school changed his tactics.