TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/112089/11208900.058

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 6KB | 103 lines

EDUCATION, Page 116

Shootouts in the Schools

Educators adopt tough tactics to cope with classroom violence


    NEW YORK CITY. At P.S. 93, a youngster tells teacher Donald
Miller, "Melvin has a toy." Since toys are not allowed in the
lunchroom, the teacher confronts five-year-old Melvin and demands
that he hand it over. Miller suddenly faces not a toy but a
"Saturday-night special" pointed at his chest. The gun turns out
to be loaded, cocked and ready for action.

    WASHINGTON. A barrage of gunfire erupts just outside Woodrow
Wilson High School as classes are dismissed for the day. Four
students are shot, but all survive. Later, a teen-age boy who is
not enrolled at Wilson is convicted of assault with a deadly
weapon. The spark for the mayhem: an argument over a seat in the
school cafeteria.

    CHICAGO. At Harper High School, two boys enter a math class
and start a fight. While students and the teacher try to break it
up, one intruder lunges toward Chester Dunbar and stabs him in the
back with a knife. As the two boys flee, Dunbar slumps to the
classroom floor, fatally wounded.

    "If schools ever were islands of safety within otherwise
violent neighborhoods, they certainly are no longer," warns a new
booklet of advice from the federally funded National School Safety
Center at California's Pepperdine University. The center says 3
million crimes a year occur on school grounds, with 183,590
injuries reported in 1987. Another study estimates that on a
typical day at least 100,000 U.S. pupils carry guns, and the
firepower is getting heavier.

    Schools, of course, cannot be isolated from neighborhoods
plagued by drugs, gangs, crime and poverty. Says Miller, the
teacher who faced a kindergartner's gun: "Whatever is out on the
street seeps into the schools." Violence, however, is no longer
confined to tough areas. In an affluent part of Tallahassee last
month, one janitor shot another to death in front of about 100
grade schoolers. Last year in posh Winnetka, Ill., a woman opened
fire in an elementary classroom, killing an eight-year-old. Other
recent school slayings have occurred in middle-class areas of
Greenwood, S.C.; Largo, Fla.; Little Rock and Virginia Beach.

    As a result of all the violence, school administrators across
the U.S. are searching through tight budgets to find money to beef
up school security. If nothing else, the schools will face legal
liability if they have not taken steps to be prepared. The New York
City schools now operate the eleventh largest security force in the
U.S. Most city schools have locked doors; 15 of them use metal
detectors; ten schools allow entry only with computerized ID cards.
Cost of all the security: $60 million annually.

    The fortress mentality is taken literally at Lindbergh Junior
High in Long Beach, Calif. After a bullet zinged past the head of
gym teacher Joan Reedy last year, the school spent $160,000 to
build a 10-ft. wall to separate the rear boundary from a housing
project and its gang gunfights. Reedy, for one, is pleased:
"Teaching here is so much more relaxed. It's given us a sense of
safety, and you can feel the unity of the school growing and
growing."

    Other security measures that have been tested include staff
training in handling emergencies, patrols by highly visible guards
and police vehicles, two-way intercom systems so that trouble can
be reported instantly, and cash awards to students who report
problems. Along with the usual fire drills, some schools in Los
Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland have scheduled "yellow-code alerts"
for classes from kindergarten up. "We have to teach students to hit
the deck when the bullets fly," explains one preparedness expert.

    A backlash against heavy-handed defense measures, however, is
starting to develop. "Why call it a school? Let's call it a
prison," complains Robert Rubel, who directs the National Alliance
for Safe Schools, a nonprofit advisory group based in Bethesda, Md.
He argues that it is impossible to prevent random violence. Rubel
thinks schools should be diligent in controlling all kinds of
disorder, handling violations of their own rules and turning crimes
over to the police.

    For schools hit by bloodshed, the effects linger long after
the police have done their job. In Stockton, Calif. a playground
shooting last January left five pupils dead. Fred Busher, the head
of the school district's psychology staff, says students "realize
now that school is not the safe place it used to be and that
something terrible can happen at any instant." The youngsters, he
adds, are "dealing with things that we hoped they'd never have to
face, or at least not until they were adults." He concedes that
healing "will take months, even years."

    School psychologists, most of whom are trained in learning
disabilities or family problems, often summon specialists to deal
with students' "post-traumatic stress syndrome." Teachers and
parents, experts say, need to bring fears immediately to the
surface after a shooting or other violent episode and allow younger
students in particular to act out and talk out the horrors they
experienced. Adults are shaken as well. At the Greenwood, S.C.,
school, Principal Eleanor Rice lost 25 lbs. in the months after a
19-year-old man barged in, shooting at random, killed two pupils
and wounded nine other people. To her, the new door locks and
limited access to the building are not guarantees against future
incidents, but they serve to instill confidence in teachers, pupils
and parents. "It has been a rough road," she admits, but "we're
going to get better, not bitter."