Principal Punched, Fire Set at Separate Schools
By Valerie Russ and Mensah Dean, Philadelphia Daily News
Mar. 14–ONLY HOURS after five City Council members and the Philadelphia School District’s chief executive, Paul Vallas, joined a community meeting yesterday at West Philadelphia High to try to quell recent violence there, two teenage boys were arrested for setting yet another small trash fire at the school.
The school was evacuated and the two students were charged with disorderly conduct, said Felecia Ward, a district spokeswoman.
Also yesterday, three girls were arrested at Kenderton Elementary School, at 15th and Ontario streets in North Philadelphia, after one of them punched the school’s principal and knocked her to the ground.
Principal Robin Wilkins, was punched in the back by an eighth-grader about 2 p.m. Wilkins had just broken up a fight between the eighth-grade girl and a seventh-grade girl outside the school, Ward said.
An eighth-grade friend of one of the fighters ran out of the school and charged toward the principal, spewing threats, Ward said. A school police officer stopped her before she could reach Wilkins.
The three girls were arrested and taken to the 35th Police District, where Wilkins pressed charges against the girl who hit her. That girl will be suspended for 10 days and recommended for expulsion to an alternative school, Ward said.
Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell organized yesterday’s 8:30 a.m. meeting of community groups and city officials following reports of at least 16 assaults on teachers and other staffers, including one attack that left a teacher with a broken jaw.
Last week, Vallas removed Clifton James as principal at West. Students said the fires that have plagued the school since last Friday were set to protest James’ removal.
Two new principals, Ernestine Caldwell and Ozzie Wright, share duties at West.
Yesterday, Blackwell said, about 100 people met in the school auditorium to talk about developing activities for students as well as providing jobs and job training for students and their parents.
Besides Vallas and Blackwell, the meeting was attended by City Council members Blondell Reynolds Brown, William K. Greenlee, Frank Rizzo and Wilson Goode Jr.; and City Controller Alan Butkovitz.
Butkovitz said he left after about an hour. “Everybody had a different idea,” he said. “That means nothing gets done. If you want to accomplish anything you have to be focused on one or two things.”
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Copyright (c) 2007, Philadelphia Daily News
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