The same question arises after every mass shooting committed by a teen: How did we miss the signs?

       Identifying which struggling teens could potentially harm others is a major preoccupation for schools and communities. Law-enforcement agencies that have studied young shooters say there are several warning signs that lead up to mass shootings—and that early intervention is critical in preventing them.

       School districts are increasingly leaning on monitoring software that examines young people’s posts and writings, because school shooters almost always document their plans.

       These software systems, from such companies as Gaggle, Lightspeed Systems and Bark, monitor communication on school-issued devices and networks. Artificial intelligence detects language signaling students’ intent to harm themselves or others. Student emails and musings written in Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365 that indicate plans of violence, as well as web searches for weapons or suicide methods, are flagged to administrators who then must decide whether a threat is credible and how to act.

       “It’s an early-warning system that alerts us that something might be going on, so we can address it before it gets to the level of a criminal act," said Quintin Shepherd, superintendent of the Victoria Independent School District in Victoria, Texas, some 200 miles east of Uvalde, where 19 elementary students and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old high-school dropout on Tuesday.

       While it’s impossible to know how many school shootings have been prevented, users say the technology is good at flagging warning signs where students are communicating using school services. But safety experts say schools must be ready to act when the alerts come in, with processes to assess the warnings and staffing to respond.

       The alerts typically contain the flagged wording, the type of threat (homicidal, suicidal or other issues) and where the student typed the words.When a threat is deemed credible—say, a student writes about having suicidal thoughts rather than writing about suicide for a class project—school counselors often visit the student’s home. Parents often express surprise, say school officials. Depending on the situation, a student may be hospitalized, referred to a therapist for treatment or be more closely monitored by counselors.

       The 18-year-old accused of killing 10 people at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket earlier this month had previously been referred to a hospital. Medical staff determined he wasn’t dangerous or mentally ill and sent him home.

       The Victoria district uses Gaggle, which costs around $6 per student a year. Yet districts can’t rely on technology alone to prevent school violence, Dr. Shepherd said. When he became superintendent four years ago, he asked community members about their concerns, and student safety ranked high on the list. Adults said they wanted more physical security, such as school police officers and notification systems. Students said they wanted more mental-health support and help developing coping skills.

       School districts have received billions of dollars in federal pandemic-relief funding to address mental-health issues and learning loss. Districts are scrambling to use all the tools they can to detect and prevent violence, although many are struggling to spend the federal aid before the money disappears from budgets in 2024.

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       Dr. Shepherd said his district reduced its workforce by 300 operational, administrative and instructional jobs to provide more mental-health services to students. Victoria—a district of 13,500 students in a largely low-income Hispanic community similar to that of Uvalde—added a social-emotional behavior specialist to every school to help struggling students and families.

       “We recognized that every student shows up to school carrying some feelings, and sometimes those feelings are sad, angry or upset," Dr. Shepherd said. “If we can see that fast and early, we can help kids from having their feelings hijack their emotions because that’s when bad things happen."

       Warning signs

       A U.S. Secret Service analysis last year of 67 avertedviolent plots against schools found that in 94% of cases, the intended attackers shared their plans verbally, over electronic messaging or in online posts. Many also outlined their plans in journals, documents and video or audio recordings that weren’t shared. The Uvalde shooter privately messaged a teenage girl overseas on Facebook about his plans to kill his grandmother and school children just before the shootings. He is also said to have posted photos and videos of guns and self-harm on social media.

       According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation report on shooters’ behavior leading up to attacks, active shooters displayed four to five behaviors that concerned those around them, such as changes in mental health, difficult interpersonal interactions and discussions of violence. Shooters also experienced multiple problems in the year before an attack, ranging from disciplinary action at school to abuse at home. Mental-health struggles such as depression, anxiety or paranoia were prevalent among these shooters. However, a formal diagnosis before an attack was made in only about 25% of the cases the FBI studied.

       For shooters under the age of 18, school peers were more likely to observe concerning behavior than family members were, the FBI found. The behavior was reported to law enforcement in 41% of the cases. In most, the only discussion about the behavior was between the shooter and peers.

       Suicidal thoughts were also common among teens who go on to harm others, according to the FBI and other officials.

       “Those who have homicidal tendencies often have suicidal tendencies. We view them both as potential threats to the district," said David Watson, director of safety and security for School District 49 in Falcon, Colo., which uses Bark to alert administrators to student threats. Mr. Watson said his district began noticing an uptick in youth mental-health issues in the 2017-2018 school year and that there have since been numerous student suicides in the region northeast of Colorado Springs.

       Bark offers a free version of its AI-powered service to schools to scan their communications. The software isn’t a stand-alone app or a filter used across the school’s network; rather, it’s implemented within the school’s Google and Microsoft Office 365 domains. For an annual fee of $2 per student, districts can pay for humans to review possible severe threats that are flagged after school hours.

       Katey McPherson, Bark’s director of professional development, said schools need “trained personnel that know what it looks like when a student is escalating toward violence or suicide," adding: “The districts that don’t have that training aren’t getting the maximum benefit of the tool."

       Dr. Shepherd said his district in Texas has responded to at least two dozen serious threats of self-harm or harm to others this school year. But he said the community never knows about the acts of violence that the mitigation efforts may have prevented. “The newspaper doesn’t carry stories about what didn’t happen," he said.

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