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House approves wide-ranging school-safety bill creating statewide threat-assessment system and new mental-health resources
Summary
House Bill 268 establishes behavioral threat-assessment teams, a statewide School and Student Safety database (S3), grants and coordinator positions for mental-health resources, and an anonymous reporting app; the bill passed 159–13 after extensive debate over privacy and student rights.
The Georgia House passed House Bill 268 on a vote of 159–13, approving a comprehensive school-safety package that creates statewide standards and systems for identifying and managing threats, adds mental-health resources for schools and requires new information-sharing measures to track and respond to potential school-safety risks.
Representative Holt Persinger, the bill sponsor, said HB 268 is intended to "save lives" by creating behavioral threat assessment management (BTAM) teams at schools, expanding GEMA's operational processes, funding behavioral health coordinator positions through grants, and creating a statewide School and Student Safety Database (S3) to collect incident records deemed to rise to a…
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