Senate passes school safety bill requiring site assessments

ATLANTA (AP) Public schools in Georgia would need to receive a threat assessment every four years under school safety legislation passed by the state Senate.

The bill, passed Wednesday, also says public schools must conduct yearly violence and terrorism response drills. It allows for a new position called ``school safety coach'' and creates an app with which students and others could report suspicious activity.

Republican Sen. John Albers said he spoke about the bill with parents from Parkland, Florida, where 17 high school students and staff were killed by a gunman in February 2018.

Albers said the goal was to help ``identify a problem before it happens.''

A controversial provision that would have created a task force that gathered individual student profiles from school and law enforcement records was removed in committee.