District 12 Senator Amy Sinclair

A bill passed by the Senate in the last full week of April looks to increase the safety of schools in Iowa.

District 12 Senator Amy Sinclair says that Senate File 583 looks to help with the formation of school safety assessment teams, which would work to identify students who may be in need of help, or those who may require intervention before something happens in a school setting. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio that it took a lot of discussion to finally come up with a bill that was agreeable.

“Again, the devil is always in the details on those types of things. We’ve been looking at this for a number of years and finally feel comfortable with where we arrived in being able to set up that system. I think it’s very important both in terms of prevention and treatment for students who are at risk of violent acts as well as the prevention of the violence itself in our schools. So I’m glad we were able to get that moving forward and get that down to the governor.”

Sinclair mentions that the bill allows these school safety assessment teams to be more proactive if they believe there’s a student who may be dangerous, and to work more efficiently with other entities to keep schools safe.