Montgomery council questions violence threshold in schools Washington Examiner
Montgomery County Council members decried on Thursday what one called a "bloodshed and bullets" threshold before schools are required to report publicly threats to safety and security.
According to Montgomery County Public Schools policy, violence or bullying generally needs to reach the level of a medical emergency or a disruption to the entire school -- not simply one classroom -- before being publicly reported as a "serious incident."
A fight, for example, might not be reported as a serious incident if two students agreed to fight, said Bob Hellmuth, the schools' safety director. The students would be disciplined, but a "serious incident" would require an element of attack.
"That sounds like the O.K. Corral definition of an assault," Councilman Roger Berliner said. "I understand why a community member may come to the conclusion that we adopted a bloodshed and bullets standard."
A record of serious incidents is made public in the district's annual "School Safety and Security at a Glance," discussed this week by the council's education and public safety committees.
Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Montgomery-council-questions-violence-threshold-in-schools-8764802-81593282.html#ixzz0chWIGmU1
Whitman's student newspaper just published a report (albeit sketchy) of an incident last week:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theblackandwhite.net/2010/01/11/whitman-students-attacked-after-basketball-game/
In response, the Whitman administration posted a letter on sportsmanship which seemed like a strange response. The memo didn't directly comment on the incident and it appears to say that even simple booing will get students and parents ejected. I find that an overreaction so much so that it seems more likely for it to have the opposite effect of what was intended. (Students will ignore the memo, adding it to the stack of other lessons that authorities lack understanding of what's really going on.) Even more seriously, the response fails to address the deeper issue - that students are so easily moved to violence and we don't seem to understand that or know how to stop it. Certainly a memo won't.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/whitnet/message/12663
I can tell you that in every high school except for Whitman, Churchill, and Wootton, that there are at least two major fights per week. Sometimes one a day. By major I mean at least two fighting, usually more, and a large crowd running to watch the fight. Sometimes it takes a half hour to get the students back to class.
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