Possible changes made to valley school's safety procedures enlight of shooting

PHOENIX - The Arizona Board of Education is looking at the state’s school safety procedures.

They are looking to make sure the standards in place are enough to protect students.

“We have state of the art training that will help teacher’s spot potential threats. This is a two step process. We have to address the mental health aspect but we also need to make sure our relationship with local law enforcement is strong,” said Superintendent John Huppenthal, Arizona Board of Education.

Huppenthal discussed threat assessment training at a news conference today. The training has been around for 10 years. It educates teachers how to spot someone who may be unstable, and how to handle those situations. It also gives school district the authority to conduct a mental evaluation. School state officials say this will allow them to hopefully prevent a massacre from happening.

In addition to the mental health training, emergency response training is also require under Title 15. Schools must do various mock drills four times a year. This is separate from fire drills that are conducted.

Schools are evaluated on their performance. But those evaluations and standards are set and graded by the district and are not monitored by the state.

Each district has its own notification and emergency system set up. It’s important for parents to contact the school and district to find out what procedures are in place to protect their child.

"We have a robo call system, where we can reach all of our students families within a matter of 10 minutes. But it's important that all parents give their school the most up to date contact information to ensure that the receive information if something were to happen," said Danielle Ariey of Peoria School District.

Officials are now trying to decide whether or not they need to make threat assessment training mandatory.