It used to be brass knuckles, and now it’s 9 mm guns.

That’s how Ed Marsman described the escalating severity of school violence Wednesday at the Regional School Safety Officers Conference at Arlington Country Club.

Marsman, who serves as safety assessment coordinator for the Avert Center for Safer Schools in Minnesota, and his colleague Jerry Jaker, director of the Minnesota Institute of Public Health, were guests at the event sponsored by Eastern Kentucky University’s Kentucky Center for School Safety (KCSS).

Marsman, Jaker and the KCSS staff were joined Wednesday by school safety officers from other areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Indiana.

Topics discussed throughout the day included emergency response and crisis management, bullying legislation, college campus safety, instructional discipline, drug and alcohol abuse among students, teacher/student relationships, school bus safety, cell phone and Internet safety.

Marsman and Jaker both were impressed with the KCSS program and the leadership of its executive director, Jon Akers.

“Jon and his fine team are national leaders,” Jaker said. “We jumped at the opportunity to come here today to learn and share some of the things we’ve learned in Minnesota.”

The Avert Center for Safer Schools is a branch of the Minnesota Institute of Public Health, and both are used for resources to implement safer schools and communities.

“We’ve worked with Jon for about two-and-a-half years and we’ve learned a lot from him,” Marsman said. “Our school assessment model is modeled after the protocol that John developed in Kentucky. We felt we didn’t have to re-invent the wheel.”

Research administered by the Avert Center for Safer Schools has concluded that perhaps too much attention is given to the school’s curriculum and that there is a lack of concern about the relationships between the teachers and the students.

“There is a tendency to get disconnected from the kids,” Marsman said. “There’s been a nationwide tendency to come up with approaches to improve test scores. We are trying to improve our technical curriculum rather than taking care of the kids as human beings.”

The need for improved test scores also is creating a lack of attention to students’ actions, overall demeanor and safety features within the school, Jaker said.

“Kids can’t learn and succeed in school if they don’t feel safe and secure,” he said. “The work that we’re doing with Jon (Akers) and those in the other states has to do with identifying behaviors of concern early before there is a shooting or another horrific tragedy.”

Based on findings from a study performed by the Avert Center for Safer Schools, most attackers: did not threaten their targets directly prior to the attack; displayed behavior indicating a need for help; had considered or attempted suicide; felt bullied and had access to weapons prior to the attack.

Anti-bullying training in Kentucky is done on a voluntary basis and can be very beneficial in today’s changing times, Akers said.

School counselors may seem like a useful tool to curbing bullying and school violence, but the way public school systems are modeled, they hardly ever get the chance.

“In our state, our counselors are trained in a variety of mental health areas, but once they get into schools, they’re doing so much administrative work like counting credits, doing award programs and they really don’t have the opportunity to sit down with the child and do counseling.”

Perhaps this is where the KCSS can become a tool in creating a safer, more healthy learning environment for Kentucky’s children.

The center offers free “Safe School Assessments” that includes an evaluation of an external assessment team that meets with the school’s principal, staff, students and parents to gain information about the school’s environment.

Those administering the assessment come from the KCSS, the Kentucky Department of Education and the Kentucky School Boards Association.

The KCSS was established in 1998 as a component of House Bill 330, which is now known as one of the most comprehensive pieces of safe schools legislation enacted in recent history.

The center has many responsibilities including the distribution of Safe Schools funds to the local school districts, data analysis and reporting, program evaluation and the facilitation of the School Safety Advisory Council, among others.

For more information about the KCSS, visit the office in Room 105 of the Stratton Building, 521 Lancaster Ave. on EKU’s campus, visit www.kysafeschools.org or call 1-877-805-4277.

Ronica Shannon can be reached at rshannon@richmondregister.com or 623-1669, Ext. 234.