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In City Schools, a Sense of Danger ; An Increase in Violence Prompts Williams to Take a Closer Look at Security and Need for Discipline

Posted on: Wednesday, 30 November 2005, 09:00 CST

By Peter Simon

After 18 years as a science teacher at Buffalo's Grover Cleveland High School, Peter Smolinski detects a growing sense of danger and apprehension in city schools.

"There's much more aggressive behavior now," said Smolinski, who suffered permanent chest injuries breaking up a fight between students two years ago. "It's much more frequent that kids are just willing to drop the gloves and go at it."

Highly publicized fights in or near several Buffalo high schools this year have put a sharp focus on school violence and discipline and prompted Superintendent James A. Williams to launch a review of school security and discipline.

Those concerns are fed by these troubling but less visible developments:

* District attendance rates -- often considered a barometer of student comfort and attachment -- are dropping. Attendance fell to 90 percent for the first two months of this school year, compared with 91.5 percent for a corresponding period last year and 92.2 percent two years ago. Drops of 4 percentage points or more were reported at Lafayette, Burgard and Riverside high schools in just one year.

* When student attitudes were last surveyed in 2003, just 23 percent of the school district's eighth- and 11th-graders felt they were in "safe and supportive learning environments."

* There is widespread concern that Buffalo's districtwide choice program, designed to give families more educational options, has allowed members of gangs to cause trouble after enrolling in the same schools.

>'Lot of tension'

"There's a lot of tension," said Philip Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation. "It's almost like waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Problems in city schools are widely viewed as extensions of growing violence and dysfunction in many neighborhoods and are more difficult to deal with because of deep personnel cuts over the past five years. For example, the school district once had 38 attendance teachers and now has just three.

While Williams has taken a series of measures to improve school security, district officials insist that the problems are often exaggerated.

"If you go to any of our schools on a given day, it is not chaos, out of control, kids banging heads, rolling down the halls," said Diane Collier, associate superintendent for student support services. "Learning is taking place. There's order. We want to change the mind-set in the public that our schools are dangerous."

Collier said suspension rates are dropping after rising dramatically for two years, an alternative school for troubled students in grades seven to 12 will be reopened in September, and closer ties have been established to Erie County Family Court.

In addition, Cornell University is working with the district to improve and coordinate security measures already in place, and Williams has increased the district's security force to 37 from 33.

"We want to look at all the things going on at all our schools and see how we can coordinate them so we're connecting the dots," Collier said. "The good news is that we're starting."

>Just a few schools

Just a few of the city's 60 schools have serious security problems, but everyday discipline -- including disrespectful language, inappropriate student behavior and unwillingness of some students to follow directions -- is a major concern, said William Jackson, district security chief.

"The problem is discipline and follow-up," he said. "We don't have that. Schools that don't take care of small discipline problems will see them grow into large discipline problems."

Rumore, citing incident reports filed by teachers with the BTF, said that is already happening. For example:

A 7-year-old pupil at an early childhood center repeatedly kicked and punched a teacher and said: "I'll kill you."

A student at Grover Cleveland High School was roaming the halls. When a teacher attempted to escort him to class, the student pushed him into a locker and said: "Don't [expletive] touch me."

Burgard Vocational High School cheerleaders left the field during a recent football game after students from other schools and district graduates threw condoms at them and repeatedly yelled obscenities.

Smolinski, the Grover Cleveland science teacher, said that the vast majority of his students are "the best bunch of kids you'd ever want to see" but that a small minority of troubled students are not only more willing to fight, but also have more violent intentions.

At one time, he said, students -- hoping they would not get too badly hurt -- mixed it up in front of teachers who had reputations for breaking up fights.

"The fights happening now are much more serious," Smolinski said. "They're looking to do damage."

Rumore said the closing of Buffalo Alternative School several years ago seriously harmed discipline. Now, he said, violent students are often suspended for up to five days, then returned to school without any effort to address their problems or violent tendencies.

He said the new alternative school should be opened in January, but Collier said the district needs until September to do it right.

>Modifying behavior

Jackson, the security chief, said the alternative school has the potential to make a big difference.

"What you need is a comprehensive program to modify behavior," he said. "If you don't modify it now, you're going to have taxpayers pay to modify it in prison."

Betty Jean Grant, the Board of Education's Ferry District member, said schools must do a better job monitoring lavatories, hallways and cafeterias, where fights often break out. Parent and community groups can provide valuable help, Grant said, but "they have to be asked and made to feel welcome."

Collier said the Cornell University partnership will focus, among other things, on more effective ways to work with troubled youngsters.

"Good teaching will eliminate most of the problems we have," she said. "Students have to feel there's something to go to school for."

e-mail: psimon@buffnews.com

Source: Buffalo News

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