Can schools flag students who raised red flags in other districts?

The suspect in Wednesday's deadly school shooting in Georgia raised red flags in the past — rising to the level of a visit from FBI agents last year — when he was a student in a different school district.

The visit did not result in criminal charges after the suspect, then 13 years old, denied owning a Discord account that threatened harm at a middle school.

We still don't know whether the teen's current school district in Georgia knew that information, but WPTV Chief Investigator Jamie Ostroff dug into Florida's statutes to see what information — if any — follows a student from school district to school district.

National News

Authorities interviewed Georgia school shooting suspect about threats in 2023

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According to Florida's Early Learning Education Code, school districts shall "require each student at the time of initial registration for school in the school district to note previous school expulsions, arrests resulting in a charge, juvenile justice actions, and any corresponding referral to mental health services by the school district."

Under this law, school districts are allowed to expel a student if they've previously been expelled from a school that's not in the district.

"I don't think that that's remotely sufficient because it relies on the bad actor to self-report," said Todd Michaels, an attorney who represented some of the families of victims of the Parkland school shooting. "Things that rely on self-reporting, tends to be where you get the lowest number of actual reports."

WPTV

Michaels calls for a non-public statewide database that school districts can access, to see whether a student raises red flags.

Reached by phone Thursday morning, a member of the Florida Department of Education's communications staff told WPTV to submit questions in an email. As of Thursday evening, no one replied to our email.