School leaders discuss safety plans following another shooting at East High: "They were doing their job"

Vernon Jones Jr. knows what it's like to work on the front lines at a Denver school. Jones Jr. is a former Manual High School assistant principal and is known for working with students on safety plans. Sometimes those plans included daily weapon searches or pat downs of students.

"We did have to do pat downs and you are… I don't want to say terrified, but you are," Jones said. "You got to stay level, so they [students] don't get escalated, and you're sitting there and you are thinking about 'what if there's something in the pant leg? What if something like what happened today, happens?'"

District officials and Denver police announced Austin Lyle, the student accused of shooting two deans inside East High School on Wednesday, was on a safety plan because of past behavior. 

Lyle had transferred to East in January from Overland High School in the Cherry Creek District. While at East, school officials were required to search him every day before he was allowed to be on school grounds. 

A safety plan is an agreement between the student and school leaders and is designed to provide extra supervision to that particular student. 

The goal of these plans is to minimize the risk of harm to the student and the greater community. Most school districts in the state utilize safety plans as a student might be placed on one due to fighting or behavioral issues.

Christine Harms, the Colorado School Safety Resource Center director, says every plan varies depending on the student's need, while it's also a team approach.

"Certainly if there's been a behavioral threat assessment done on the student to see whether or not they perhaps are on a pathway to violence and also if the student has had a suicide risk assessment done, there would be a safety plan after that as well," Harms told CBS News Colorado. "So, depending on what is involved in the plan, certain people would be given certain responsibilities to carry up with that response plan. So, it may be that the student is referred to the school counselor or therapy or the student is being asked to have their backpack checked every morning by someone in the central office."

Harms and Jones say it's possible, but it's unlikely for a school resource officer to carry out a student's safety plan with routine pat downs and searches because SROs aren't usually on campus every day or they work on multiple school campuses. 

The duty usually falls on an administrator who knows the individual or a teacher who helped build the safety plan with the student. It's usually someone who's at the school every day that makes sure those plans are being executed. 

Jones Jr. says many schools in the Denver area are also under-resourced, another reason why it's hard for schools to carry out the plans.

"They were doing their job," Jones expressed. "And so the struggle with that is, in doing their job, they were putting their lives at risk and that's what people don't understand."

Following this latest incident, many ask do safety plans work?

"When they are executed well, when they are executed consistently, when they are more about restoration and not punitive, and when it's about helping to build a kid up and learn from a mistake, they do work," Jones said.