Howard County school officials recorded almost 90 incident of racial conflict and other forms of intolerance in a nine-week period during the past school year. That was good news.
Tracking and treating the incidents -- not the number -- is evidence that the school system is making progress in how it handles such incidents, local and state officials say.
A year ago, no one kept track of the number of racial and other hate-related incidents occurring on Howard County school grounds. Students who hollered racial epithets or scrawled them on walls drew little reaction from principals and teachers.
Administrators responded slowly to even the most chafing reports: When a white boy sprayed a 12-year-old black Glenwood Middle School student with disinfectant on a school bus, the girl's mother was told the superintendent wouldn't be able to see her for two weeks.
In response to this and other incidents, the Maryland Commission on Human Relations blistered the county school system, concluding that dozens of incidents had gone unreported and that principals and teachers were avoiding reporting incidents they knew about.
fTC Although the schools had a system to track the number of race incidents, fewer than five were recorded in 1992.
Commission Deputy Director Henry Ford says Howard schools have gone a long way this year -- further than any other school system in the state.
"I think they took a more pro-active stance than what we would have demanded of them," he said.
Evonnie Gbadebo, the mother of the Glenwood student, believes the schools have taken a big step forward, although she still questions whether school administrators and other staff are being held accountable for dealing with problems.
"The school system can no longer say the racial incidents are isolated, or that they're simply not occurring," she said. "The acknowledgment that 'yes, there is a problem,' is the most encouraging thing."
The school system hired a new human relations coordinator, instituted a more stringent reporting system, and laid down a blueprint for administrators to follow when hate incidents occur. Administrators and the school board vowed that human relations would be a priority.
Students who uttered racial slurs -- even in jest -- were counseled and their parents called in. Some were asked to write letters of apology.
The school system more than tripled the human relations budget to $212,000.
