We had the topic of discipline. We did our topic on school safety and crime. We also did suspensions and expulsion. It is kind of sad that school can be a fearful place. So many kids and teachers are victims of crimes and bullying.
Bullying contributes to a climate of fear of people in schools. It also sends kids into depression and to try or commit suicide. In 1999, about five percent of student’s ages twelve through eighteen reported that they had been bullied at school in the last six months. White and black students were more likely to report being victimized by bullies than were students of other races. Five percent of students in grades eight and nine and about two percent in grades ten through twelve were bullied. About fourteen percent of all students said that they had been in a physical fight on school property. Males more than females were likely to get into fights. Of ninth through twelfth grade students those in lower grades reported being in more fights than students in higher grades.
In 1993, 1995, 1997, and 1999, about seven to eight percent of students reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. Males were more likely than females to report being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. In ninth through twelfth grade, students in lower grades were more likely to be threatened or injured with a weapon on school property than were students in higher grades.
From summer of 98-99 there were forty seven school-associated violent deaths in the United States. Thirty-eight of these violent deaths were homicides, six were suicides, two were killed by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty and one was unintentional. There were a total of 2,407 homicides and 1,854 suicides of children ages
5 through 19 occurring in the 1999 calendar year.
The vast majority of crimes reported by public schools were of the less serious violent or nonviolent type in 1996-97. Out of 424,000 total crimes reported to the police, 402,000 were less serious. The percentage of schools reporting at least one serious violent crime was much higher in cities (seventeen percent) than in towns (five percent) or rural areas (eight percent). About one-half of all public middle and high schools reported incidents of vandalism, theft or larceny, and physical attacks or fights without weapons to the police or other law enforcement representatives in the school year. Considerably smaller percentages of public middle and high schools reported the more serious violent crimes of rape or other type of sexual battery (five and eight percent); robbery (five percent); or physical attack or fight with a weapon (twelve and thirteen percent). In 1996-97, physical attack or fight without a weapon was generally the most commonly reported crime at the middle and high school levels. Theft or larceny was more common at the high school than the middle school level
Male teachers are more likely to be target of violent crime than women teachers. Urban schools are more likely to have more violent crimes than rural/suburban schools. Over a five-year period from 1995 through 1999, teachers were the victims of approximately 1,708,000 nonfatal crimes at school, including 1,073,000 thefts and 635,000 violent crimes (rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) or 342,000 nonfatal crimes per year. Among the violent crimes against teachers during this five-year period, there were about 69,000 serious violent crimes (eleven percent of the violent crimes), including rape or sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault or 14,000 serious crimes per year. In 1999, seventeen percent of students in
grades nine through twelve reported carrying a weapon such as a gun, knife, or club
anywhere. About seven percent reported they had carried a weapon on school property. In 1999, eleven percent of males carried a weapon on school property, compared with three percent of females.
More urban kids get attacked from and to school than suburban/rural kids. Urban kids feel less safe at school than suburban and rural kids. Black and Hispanics more than Whites were to avoid some palaces inside school so were urban kids more than suburban kids and so were students in lower grades. In 2001, twelve percent of student’s ages twelve through eighteen reported that someone at school had used hate-related words against them. In both 1999 and 2001, thirty six percent of students saw hate-related graffiti at school. In 2001, twenty percent of students reported that street gangs were present at their schools. Students in urban schools were more likely to report that there were street gangs at their schools, twenty-nine percent, than were suburban and rural students. Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to report gangs too. Males more than females and students in higher grades were more likely to use alcohol anywhere. In grade nine through twelve, forty seven percent used alcohol with five percent drinking in school. Twenty Four percent of students in grade nine through twelve reported using marijuana anywhere where five percent of students reported using marijuana on school property. Also in 2001, males more than females were most likely to report drugs offered, sold, or given them an illegal drug on school property which 29% of all student in all four grades did.
Hope High School has diversity and tons of it. Fifty percent of Hope’s 1500
students are Hispanic, thirty are African-American, five percent are Asian, one percent is
native-American and twelve percent are white. Thirty percent of student there reported being robbed, twenty five percent being bullied and twenty seven percent reporting drugs offered, sold or giving them an illegal drug on school property. Fifty-one students were sent to the student relation office referrals, five were exclusions and 611 students were suspended. The police were called 197 times, they made 35 arrests and there are two in the school. These figures are all for the 2001-2002 school year. Most students come from South Providence with violence, gangs, guns, and knives, social and family problems.
Under No Child Left Behind, states must report school safety statistics to the public on a school-by-school basis, and districts must use federal school-safety funding to establish a plan for keeping schools safe and drug free. These plans must include: appropriate and effective discipline policies; security procedures; prevention activities; student codes of conduct; and a crisis management plan for responding to violent or traumatic incidents on school grounds. It also protects teachers from any harm. We do not believe that a terrorism plan is needed for schools; however we think a natural disaster/emergency plan is needed most likely leading to a lockdown of the school. No one gets in and now one gets out, not even parents who want their kid.
In our school discipline would be fierce. The school will not have a “behavioral” room for the disruptive kids no matter what the law says. In Hope High, the principal has a rule that if you get into a fight than your suspended without any gray area. That would be a rule in our school without any gray area because when you have a gray area you get
more problems. In the movie Lean on me, Principal Joe Clarke kicked all the druggies out. If any teacher or student in my school that reports someone selling, receiving or doing drugs, smoking or alcohol they automatically fail for the year and get kicked out of school. If a kid skips class to smoke, they kicked out of the school forever. Some of the druggies came back into the school in the movie and Mr. Clarke put chains on the doors. We do not want that in my school, the doors will be locked from the outside with a key but open from the inside so students and faculty can get out if there is a fire. There will be no metal detectors and surveillance cameras inside the school only at the doors. We think they are a disgrace in schools which are supposed to be a safe place for children. Instead there will be random bag searches of kids coming into school in which authority figures will be at every entrance to check bags. There will be searches of cars and buses from policeman and dogs. They will also do random searches of lockers. There will be a security team of five security personnel and one head security personnel who is a policeman. Of course the team will vary in size depending how big or small the school is.
Their will be teaching of respect at the school. Not to step on other people projects but ethics will be taught in this high school. Teaching other religions is important to learn our differences and the teaching of ethnic groups also will learn how different races act. There will be a student/guidance teacher relationship where the students tell them about his or her problems at home or at school and learn how to deal with them. Parents will be involved with their kid’s schools with newsletters going home and phone calls. Fighting will result in suspension and threatening someone will result in
expulsion of school. Our suspensions will be for a minimum of ten days. Doing violent
actions will result in jail time so will some other actions like threatening someone
verbally or psychical. Teachers will work with administrators and police on punishing students. Last we will have a peer to peer system and a mentor system. We will have a student from an upper class with a student from the lower class like Mr. Hobin’s idea. We will also have a teacher or an adult from the community to be a mentor to the kid. All kids will participate because they are still learning at that age. The school should have a zero-tolerance policy just like the one in Providence public schools.
If the school gets a bomb or a Columbine massacre type threat, you do not sound the fire alarm. Instead you go from room to room with people helping you to have the students leave the building immediately. If you have deaths at school like shootings, it becomes hounded by the media receiving national in not international attention and then you give psychological help to the students and other persons involved. The school does not handle it by themselves or at all, they call and let the SWAT Team, FBI and police handle this.
We interviewed the police at our school for this project. They said that Coventry High has an emergency plan dealing with terrorist threats recommended from No child left behind. That details a lockdown and going to a safer area inside the school. They also said that they did locker searches, car searches and made a few arrests this year. They did not mention drugs other than smoking cigarettes and kind of threats, if any, from any students. Although last year, they said someone threatened the whole school. A few teachers had their personal belongings stolen and students had a number of things
stolen. Bullying was a problem in our school but they did not give me information on
threats to teachers and other students.
In the end we thought this project was good. It’s nice to reform the schools of what your school does not have and that is safety. It was an eye awakener and should be to every adult that says security and safety at schools should be much better than what it is. Schools are having problems and the public should know about this. The Bush administration is not doing anything too help it too.
