School Safety

Officer Don Bridges stepped into the courtyard of Franklin High School, where students chatted as they ate their lunches, sipping from cartons of chocolate milk and bottles of soda. A group of six teens milled about by the entrance. "You all being good out here?" Bridges asked the boys. "Uh-huh," a few of them answered. For nearly a decade, Bridges has been a fixture at the Reisterstown school of about 1,500 students. Now, he's headed for a weeklong visit to the nation of Georgia, where leaders are setting up their own school officer program.

Officer Don Bridges stepped into the courtyard of Franklin High School, where students chatted as they ate their lunches, sipping from cartons of chocolate milk and bottles of soda. A group of six teens milled about by the entrance. "You all being good out here?" Bridges asked the boys. "Uh-huh," a few of them answered. For nearly a decade, Bridges has been a fixture at the Reisterstown school of about 1,500 students. Now, he's headed for a weeklong visit to the nation of Georgia, where leaders are setting up their own school officer program.

The Baltimore school system will host three forums this week on school safety. The forums will be held from 6 p.m. 8 p.m. tonight at Digital Harbor High School, 1100 Covington St.; from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, 3500 Hillen Road; and from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturday at Frederick Douglass High School, 2301 Gwynns Falls Parkway. The forums are to follow an invitation-only summit on school safety to be hosted today by state Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings.

More than a half million dollars has been committed to law enforcement agencies across the state to improve school bus safety, the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention announced Monday. Though the commitment comes months after a one-day study the State Department of Education discovered more than 7,000 violations by drivers regarding school bus safety, the two are not related, a state spokesman said. "There's no direct cause and effect," said Bill Toohey, a spokesman for the Office of Crime Control and Prevention.

Linda Muhammad said she knows what should have happened after that .22-caliber handgun went off at Grove Park Elementary School this week. "That should have been a soft lockdown, according to the conference," Muhammad said from her Northeast Baltimore home yesterday morning. The conference she referred to is the one that was held Tuesday in Chevy Chase. The one that President Bush - you might remember him as the guy every Democratic candidate in Maryland ran against in the primary - set up to discuss school safety.

A semester-long class concentrated on conflict resolution. An in-school room to send disruptive kids, staffed by a police officer. Requiring students to address administrators as "ma'am" or "sir." About 50 parents and community leaders offered those and other suggestions last night to Baltimore school officials, who are completing a systemwide safety plan. The safety plan was written in response to a requirement handed down last summer by the Maryland State Department of Education. It focuses on parent and community involvement to help formulate policies in discipline and suspension intervention.

In the last meeting of their four-year term, Anne Arundel County Council members voted last night to alter a tax credit program for homeowners. In other action, the council defeated a resolution introduced by Vice Chairman Daniel E. Klosterman Jr., a Democrat from Millersville, to establish a pre-emptive school safety program to better protect students and teachers from dangerous attacks. Klosterman, who is running for re-election, introduced his plan last weekend. Some council members criticized his timing, which parallels news reports of sniper attacks whose victims included a school-age child.

As the nation's public schools closed last spring, there was something in the air beyond the usual mix of exultation, exhaustion and sentimentality. There was relief.What happened at Columbine High had infected schools everywhere with a severe case of rattled nerves. It caused us to question many of our assumptions, primarily the notion that at the very least, schools provided a haven for our kids. It didn't matter that statistics showed that the assumption remained valid, that schools are largely free of violence.

We'll begin this discussion of crazed policies regarding school safety with a confession. As a child, I had a deep fascination for a contraption called a wrist rocket. It was a toy my brothers owned and I wanted. It worked like a miniature catapult for spitballs, rocks, marbles and whatever else you could nestle into the rubber band-like launcher. I never took it to the schoolyard near my house, where I often played, but only because I could never sneak it away from my brothers.

The Greater Pasadena Council is presenting a forum on community and school safety at 7 p.m. Thursday at Jacobsville Elementary School, 3801 Mountain Road.Principals from Bodkin, Lake Shore, Jacobsville, Pasadena and Fort Smallwood elementary schools, Chesapeake Bay Middle School and Chesapeake High School, will join with members of the council and local community associations to promote open communication between school and community leaders.Participants will have the opportunity to exchange concerns about student behavior and violence in the community and schools.

At City Springs Elementary and Middle School in Baltimore, where 99 percent of students are from families with incomes below the poverty line, there were 86 student suspensions in 2008-09. In 2009-10, there were only 10 suspensions. Twenty students at City Springs were suspended for fighting in 2008-09 and 16 more for insubordination. A year later, only two were suspended for fighting and none for insubordination. In that same year, the number of City Springs students functioning at grade level tripled.

We'll begin this discussion of crazed policies regarding school safety with a confession. As a child, I had a deep fascination for a contraption called a wrist rocket. It was a toy my brothers owned and I wanted. It worked like a miniature catapult for spitballs, rocks, marbles and whatever else you could nestle into the rubber band-like launcher. I never took it to the schoolyard near my house, where I often played, but only because I could never sneak it away from my brothers.

Over the years, Howard County has earned a reputation as a progressive place. Its government has spent heavily in schools, created a fund to help residents lacking health insurance and last year banned minors from using commercial tanning beds without a doctor's prescription, a first in Maryland. Given all these — dare we say — liberal and family-friendly tendencies, it is more than a little shocking that Howard has yet to embrace the use of speed cameras to make school zones safer.

Baltimore County's list of requests for this year's General Assembly is focused on education and public safety, County Executive James T. Smith Jr. told state legislators at a meeting yesterday in Towson. Despite reduced state revenue projections and the impact of the national economic collapse, he urged lawmakers to continue to support the legislature's $325 million commitment to a statewide public-school construction program for fiscal year 2010. County public schools have requested $84.5 million in state funds for construction and renovations, he said, including projects at Parkville High School, Catonsville High and Milford Mill Academy that would account for $20.4 million.

A group of Howard County students and staff members weighed in on school safety at a statewide summit held last week in Greenbelt. The group, made up of seven students and four staff members from various county schools, spent the day brainstorming ways to thwart violence in schools. The event was organized Rep. Elijah E. Cummings and state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick. Adejire Bademosi, Howard County's student member of the school board, said the summit was valuable. "We get an opportunity to talk," she said.

A student from an Anne Arundel County high school said she's seen guns on campus. A Howard County girl said squabbles that start as Internet exchanges lead to fights at school. And a senior at a Baltimore school told of fights that are part of gang initiations. One of the main messages from students across Maryland who gathered yesterday at a summit on school violence is that the issue cannot be ignored. "We have so many problems in our school system that we don't think about," said Josh Maley, 16, a junior at Howard High in Ellicott City.

A student from an Anne Arundel County high school said she's seen guns on campus. A Howard County girl said squabbles that start as Internet exchanges lead to fights at school. And a senior at a Baltimore school told of fights that are part of gang initiations. One of the main messages from students across Maryland who gathered yesterday at a summit on school violence is that the issue cannot be ignored. "We have so many problems in our school system that we don't think about," said Josh Maley, 16, a junior at Howard High in Ellicott City.

Maryland officials have agreed to double the number of probation officers supervising juvenile offenders in high schools next fall, expanding on a fledgling program aimed at helping troubled students and improving school safety."

After several well-publicized violent incidents last school year, Baltimore's teachers got a lesson on how building stronger relationships with their students reduces the chance of classroom disruption and increases achievement. "When students have positive caring, nurturing and supportive relationships with their teachers, classroom problems decrease," said Donna Ford, who holds the Betts Chair in education and human development at Vanderbilt University. After attacks on teachers last year, including one at Reginald F. Lewis High School that was videotaped on a cell phone and replayed on national news, teachers told schools chief Andres Alonso and Mayor Sheila Dixon at a forum that they needed more professional training to help them deal with disruptive students.

The Baltimore school system will host three forums this week on school safety. The forums will be held from 6 p.m. 8 p.m. tonight at Digital Harbor High School, 1100 Covington St.; from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, 3500 Hillen Road; and from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturday at Frederick Douglass High School, 2301 Gwynns Falls Parkway. The forums are to follow an invitation-only summit on school safety to be hosted today by state Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings.