A service of Salisbury University and University of Maryland Eastern Shore
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Delaware Education Dept. Lifts Requirements on Reporting Threats

melinda shelton
/
creative commons

The Delaware Department of Education has issued new administrative changes.

They no longer require schools to report offensive touching or threats to kill and seriously injure public school students or education staff.

The Wilmington News Journal reports that the notice of the change was published six years after the Delaware legislature eliminated both terroristic threatening and offensive touching of school employees for mandatory reporting.

The paper reports this also means they will not have to be reported to police.

Schools will still have to report violent felonies such as vandalism or sexual harassment.

As to why there was a delay in implementation the Education Department said its review found an inconsistency with state law.

The paper reports that a terroristic threat is still considered a felony and could result in evacuation or lockdown of the facility.

Last year Delaware schools reported over 5-thousand incidents of offensive touching of students or staff.

In addition, there were 315 reported incidents of threats against a student and nearly 300 such threats against school staff.

Don Rush is the News Director at Delmarva Public Media. An award-winning journalist, Don reports major local issues of the day, from sea level rise, to urban development, to the changing demographics of Delmarva.