John Van Dreal is a school psychologist and the retired director of security, safety, and risk management for the Salem-Keizer School District. He has more than 30 years of experience in preventive behavioral threat assessment and management, psycho-educational evaluation, crisis intervention, behavioral intervention, and security and risk management systems consultation. He is recognized internationally as an expert in threat assessment and as a pioneer of multidisciplinary threat assessment.

In 1999, he began the development and implementation of the Salem-Keizer Cascade Model, a multiagency student violence prevention and behavioral threat assessment system that is considered by experts to be a leading practice and is identified by the U.S. Department of Education and the What Works Clearinghouse as a best-practice program. In addition to behavioral threat assessment, the collaborative, multidisciplinary model is now a comprehensive preventive assessment and safety planning system that includes suicide risk assessment and prevention, fire misbehavior assessment, and problematic sexual behavior assessment and management. Through that collaboration, he has worked daily with educators, law enforcement, human resources, trial court personnel, juvenile justice, and mental health professionals in the assessment and management of youth and adult threats of aggression within schools, higher education, public and private institutions, and the community.

He has also served as a member of the Marion County Threat Advisory Team since 1999. He is the editor and principal author of the book, Assessing Student Threats: Implementing the Salem-Keizer System, Second Edition, and has co-authored a number of threat assessment and school security projects, including legislative proposals from the Oregon Governor’s Task Force on School Safety.

Please visit John’s website, John Van Dreal Consulting, to read his full bio and learn more about his experience, background, and services offered.