By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter (Part I of V Series Discussing Baker Acts)
It isn’t uncommon these days to see a Levy County public school student being marched out to a patrol car in handcuffs for a trip to Gainesville.
The Levy County sheriff’s deputy often isn’t arresting the student.
The deputy in many cases has determined the student might harm themselves or someone else and is transporting them to Gainesville for an involuntary mental health evaluation under Florida’s Baker Act.
Deputies handcuff the student for their protection and for the protection of the officer when the child is going for an evaluation, but local officials are reluctant to characterize students as being traumatized by the experience. They view Baker Acting as an essential tool to protect schools in the era of mass shootings.
The process of Baker Acting Levy County public school students occurred 41 times during the 2018-19 school year. There were 25 Baker Acts in the previous school year, according to Levy County Sheriff’s Office records.
The school district statistics are similar. The district recorded 39 student Baker Acts in 2018-19. The district had no Baker Act statistics for 2017-18. School officials weren’t recording Baker Acts until the Florida Legislature passed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act following the Parkland, Fla. massacre last year.
Levy County Baker Acts by School 2018-19
- Bronson Elementary School 5
- Bronson Middle High School 9
- Chiefland Elementary School 11
- Chiefland Middle High School 2
- Cedar Key School 5
- Joyce Bullock Elementary School 1
- Williston Elementary School 2
- Williston Middle High School 2
- Yankeetown School 1
- Nature Coast Middle School Charter School 1
- Whispering Winds Charter School 0
Valentine’s Day Massacre
On Valentine’s Day 2018, a gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, killing 17 students and staff and injuring 17 others. Witnesses identified Nicholas Cruz, a 19-year-old expelled student, as the gunman.
In Levy County, public school students are transported by a deputy sheriff in a patrol car to a Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) in Gainesville. The CSU is operated by Meridian Behavioral Healthcare. Many times there is no licensed mental health professional on duty in Levy County schools and the job of identifying a student who might be a threat falls on the school resource officer, the only person authorized to Baker Act students.
When the student arrives at the Meridian CSU in Gainesville, they are examined by a mental health professional and later transported to Meridian’s Child CSU Unit in Lake City if mental illness is diagnosed. Students can be held for up to 72 hours or longer in Lake City depending on circumstances. They can be counseled and given anti-psychotic drugs or anti-depressants while in the custody of the CSU. The students must accept treatment.
Parents and Baker Acts
Parents can’t halt the Baker Act process. The school makes an effort to locate the parent as soon as possible after the deputy Baker Acts the child, but since Baker Acts aren’t planned in advance, finding the parent is sometimes challenging in the middle of a school day. When parents wish to file a legal challenge to the Baker Act of their child, a public defender is assigned to the parents and the case will go before a judge for a ruling. Witnesses can be called. The parents aren’t charged for the lawyer or for issuing subpoenas to witnesses.
The process of treating a student for mental illness at the CSU is known as crisis stabilization. When a mental health professional has determined a student is mentally ill, regardless of whether the student agrees with the diagnosis, they are transported to Meridian’s Child CSU Unit in Lake City.
Arrests vs. Baker Acts
Oddly, the number of students arrested at Levy County public schools over the past two years decreased as Baker Acts increased. There were 7 student arrests in 2017-18 when the number of Baker Acts recorded was 25, but there were 2 arrests the following year when Baker Acts rose to 41. School officials appear to be opting for mental health treatments over arrests in some cases.
Baker Acts aren’t limited to students. Adults are involuntarily committed to Crisis Stabilization Units throughout Florida under the Baker Act, but Spotlight is focusing on students under the age of 18 who are removed from Levy County public schools and required by state law to submit to a mental health examination in Gainesville.
Sensitive Question
Levy County school officials were asked if students from lower income families were more likely to be Baker Acted than those from wealthier families, or if it was possible students from affluent families were being excluded entirely. The officials reacted with surprise to the question and said they were certain the use of the Baker Act had nothing to do with income levels. They said the school district doesn’t keep statistics on the income levels of the families of Baker Acted students.
The purpose of the question was to determine if there is possibly an unconscious bias, or conscious bias that exists on the part of school staff and deputies in choosing students for a Baker Act based on whether the student is from a prominent family or from a lower income family. The school district has no statistics that could answer the question.
Meridian Statistics
One prominent businessman in Chiefland said times have really changed since he attended Chiefland High School. When he was in high school in the 1980s young men often brought rifles to school in their pickup trucks. Students were allowed to butcher a deer at the agricultural building after going hunting. Today a student bringing a rifle to school could be arrested and expelled from school or Baker Acted if a deputy thought he was a danger to himself or others.
Meridian Behavioral Healthcare compiles statistics on admissions of children to Baker Act facilities. The company statistics don’t distinguish between school-based Baker Acts of children and Baker Acts outside school campuses. Meridian’s statistics for children admitted to Baker Act facilities in 2017-18 and 2018-19 are listed below.
- Levy County admissions totaled 42 in 2017-18, with 42 crisis interventions the same year, and 5 crisis interventions in which the child wasn’t admitted for treatment. A crisis intervention means Meridian interviewed a patient about whatever crisis was taking place. The third category, crisis intervention without admission, means the patient did not meet the criteria for inpatient treatment and was referred for outpatient services, according to Joy Riddle, public information officer for Meridian.
Levy County admissions totaled 71 in 2018-19 with 71 students given crisis intervention, and 16 students who weren’t admitted for inpatient treatment. They were referred to outpatient services.
- Gilchrist County admissions totaled 14 in 2017-18, with 15 crisis interventions, and 3 children who didn’t qualify for inpatient treatment. They were sent for outpatient services.
Gilchrist County admissions totaled 22 in 2018-19, with 22 crisis interventions and 4 children who didn’t qualify for inpatient treatment and were referred for outpatient services.
- Dixie County admissions totaled 6 in 2017-18, with 6 crisis interventions. There were no statistics for crisis intervention without admission.
Dixie County had 7 admissions in 2018-19, with 5 crisis interventions. Once again, there were no statistics for children who weren’t admitted after crisis intervention.
For those readers who might wonder why the past two school years were selected for comparison, the year 2017-18 was largely free of the influence of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act and its school safety requirements. The year 2018-19 saw the full force of the new state law on public schools. Baker Acts increased significantly.
Schools under Pressure
Public school districts in Florida are under enormous pressure to comply with state safety requirements. One news story said a statewide survey revealed that almost 200 Florida schools have no armed security as required by state law. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission urged the Florida Department of Education to “name names and name people” who aren’t complying with the law.
The statewide survey was conducted under the promise of anonymity. According to the survey, 10 of the state’s 67 school districts failed to have full-time guards or law enforcement officers in place at every campus. Office of Safe Schools Director Damien Kelly said in seven of those 10 districts, the lack of armed guards was at charter schools. In two of the districts it was a combination of charter and traditional public high schools and in one district it was a small school program. Kelly said there are about 190 schools across Florida not in compliance with the state mandate.
Levy Deputies, Hardening Schools
Levy County has managed to place one school resource deputy on each campus including the two charter schools. The Levy County Commission and the Florida Department of Education provided nearly all the money for placing school deputies in Levy County public schools. The Levy County School District said it provided all the money it could afford.
Schools are required to have active shooter drills once a month. Each school is required to have a mental health assessment team and a threat assessment team.
The district is also hardening schools to make them less vulnerable to active shooters. The 2018-19 school hardening grant from the state was $192,846.
The school board spent the money on five schools:
- Williston Elementary School $63,575
- Bronson Elementary School $70,000
- Joyce Bullock Elementary School $52,551.73
- Whispering Winds Charter School $3,899.52
- Nature Coast Middle Charter School $2,819.75.
Chiefland Middle High School received no state grant money for hardening the school despite its location at the intersection of four U.S. highways. The front door of the school opens to the busiest intersection in the county – U.S. 19, U.S 98, U.S. 129 and U.S. 27A. All four highways meet in front of the school’s front entrance.
Hardening schools means adding fencing, remodeling the front office to ensure an active shooter can’t easily access student classroom areas, creating sheltered areas where students can hide from an active shooter and other modifications to schools.
CMHS has received no hardening dollars.
A few years ago the school district added a few gates and moved some fencing for security reasons at CMHS, but that was well before the Parkland massacre and the resulting Marjory Stoneman Douglas Safety Act.
(Part One of Four in Series Discussing Baker Acts) Posted August 26, 2019
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