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Criminal Justice Institute urges statewide push on youth mental health, threat teams and SRO professionalization
Summary
At a Senate Education Committee hearing, Cheryl May of the Criminal Justice Institute outlined 30 commission recommendations—youth mental‑health training, behavioral threat‑assessment teams, a trauma response initiative and tightened SRO training—while legislators pressed for funding and statewide rollout details.
Cheryl May, director of the Criminal Justice Institute and the Arkansas Center for School Safety, told the Senate Education Committee that the state’s school‑safety work traces to a 2018 commission that produced 30 recommendations and to legislation enacted in 2019 and 2021.
May described a set of interlocking steps the center and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) are promoting: broader Youth Mental Health First Aid training for staff, formal behavioral threat‑assessment teams, trauma‑response supports for schools and tighter role definitions and training for school resource officers (SROs). “When we met as a commission, in 2018, we worked for 9 months. There were 19 of us, and we came up with 30 recommendations,” May said.
On mental‑health training, May noted statutory…
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