Part of the public outrage stemmed from how Berry said her principal responded to the incident. She said the principal told her she'd provoked the attack by telling the student she would defend herself.
"That principal might need to be disciplined because no teacher should be disrespected in the classroom," Dixon said at a morning news conference.
While teachers also have to respect students, the mayor said, the principal's response "is unfair to that teacher."
Berry said that she was also frustrated that the principal did not remove the student from the school immediately. As she left the school Friday to go to a medical clinic, Berry said, she had to pass by the girl, bragging to her friends about what she'd done.
The principal, Jean Ragin, did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages yesterday.
News of the assault came the same week as two West Baltimore Middle School students were beaten with lacrosse sticks by peers who mistook red trim on one of the boys' athletic shoes as a gang sign.
"It's getting out of hand," Dixon said. "This might sound harsh, but I believe we have to come up with some very stern discipline action. Young people now feel, some feel, that it's acceptable, and it's not acceptable."
The teachers union has long asserted that city school administrators aren't reporting violent incidents or doing enough to punish children who are violent, for fear their schools will be labeled "persistently dangerous" under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Maryland defines a persistently dangerous school as one with a certain percentage of its student population suspended for violent offenses. Critics say that that discourages suspensions and makes violence worse because students see they can get away with it.
Social networking sites like MySpace and the video-sharing site YouTube, along with the prevalence of cell phones with video cameras, have made school violence and other inappropriate behavior easier to document.
YouTube contains footage of boys fighting in the bathroom at Thurgood Marshall High and students at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High trying to throw a girl out of a window.
Berry said one of her friends found the video of her assault on MySpace, and her union representatives urged her to bring it to the news media's attention.
Since becoming CEO of the city schools last summer, Alonso has encouraged principals to look at alternatives to suspension for nonviolent offenses, but urged zero tolerance for violence.
