EDUCATORS GET TOUGH ON VIOLENCE (2024)

Bloody noses are the least of their worries, say the teachers who confront violence in Maryland schools every day. Guns, knives, sexual assaults -- all the violence that permeates society -- turn up in school.

"When a student can't go to the ladies room because she's afraid another student is going to threaten her in there or hurt her, we have a problem," said Joe Monte, president of the Montgomery County Federation of Teachers. "We can't go on hiding it."

With the level of in-school violence apparently rising -- and the level of anxiety over it from parents and teachers definitely rising -- school officials in Maryland and across the country are starting the fall semester by vowing to get tough themselves.

Responding in part to complaints from school administrators and teachers organizations, Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) has proposed a statewide policy of removing "chronically disruptive" students from the classrooms, expelling them in the most extreme cases.

Further swelling the ranks of the suspended will be a "zero-tolerance" law taking effect this year, which mandates a one-year suspension for any student caught with a gun on school property.

"I think for certain offenses -- if you bring a gun to school, if you hurt somebody -- maybe you need to just sit out of school for a semester. There's another school out there called the school of hard knocks," said Huntley J. Cross, special assistant for student discipline in the Anne Arundel County school system.

"Take that one kid ruining it for the other 35 in his class. He's robbing 35 kids of their education. I think you have to do triage," said Cross, complaining that suspended students are being allowed back in school too soon. "In a perfect world, I'd like to be able to save every kid, but we've tipped the balance too far toward individual rights."

Glendening and state education officials stress that they are committed to expanding alternative programs for disruptive students, ranging from special in-school classes to separate schools set aside for chronically troublesome students.

Last year, the state spent $357,000 on those programs and on intervention programs, such as peer counseling, aimed at reversing behavior problems before they become serious.

"I believe the legislature, this coming year, will be funding more money for disruptive youth," said Lu Morrissey, who heads the safe and drug-free schools section of the state Department of Education. "The governor has made it a priority."

But some parents are skeptical.

"The easy thing to do is expel a kid. But what are you going to do with these kids if the funds aren't there to conduct these programs?" said Carolyn Roeding, an official with the state Association of PTAs. "Aside from the harm it does to children, do you really want these kids hanging around in the community?"

Ruth Farmer, an Anne Arundel County parent, complains that school officials have been too quick to kick her son out of school and have failed to provide alternative placements to help correct his behavior problems. "They just put them out on the street," she said. "I begged them and begged them: Don't send him home. Please punish him at school.' "

Farmer said her son, now 16, lost more than 200 school days all told from ages 13 to 15 because of suspensions and expulsions.

State school officials said it is only in rare cases that children are suspended without being placed in another program. There were 238 such students in the 1993-94 school year, along with 1,334 expelled, they said.

The state supports one special school for disruptive middle-school students, in the former Bladensburg Elementary School, but the school, which costs just more than $1 million a year to maintain, is intended to serve, at most, only 60 students. At their own expense, several jurisdictions have established special schools or classes for disruptive students.

Teachers want something done, not only for the chronic, extreme misbehavers but also for those who are "just generally disruptive at certain times of day," said Pat Foerster, an official of the Maryland State Teachers Association who is on a Glendening-formed task force on violence prevention.

The new mood to get tough on troublesome children reflects the recent push by conservatives and national teachers organizations to hold students more accountable for the violence and disruption in their schools.

"Several states have instituted these zero-tolerance policies and put more teeth into their disciplinary codes, and the trend is continuing," said Celia Lose, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers, which is launching a campaign this year to implore legislatures to make safe schools a priority.

"We're trying to emphasize that improving standards of student conduct goes hand-in-hand with improving standards of academic achievement," she said.

One of the inspirations for the changes in Maryland, according to an official of the state teachers association, has been the conservative bestseller "The Death of Common Sense." The book includes a section in which author Phillip K. Howard says violence and disorder have been allowed to flourish in public schools in part because of society's overemphasis on students' due process rights.

Clearly, the issue has gotten school officials' attention. * In Anne Arundel County, assaults on staff rose from 56 in the 1993-94 school year to 93 the next year. Major disturbances (those involving more than two combatants) rose from 15 to 47 in 1994-95. The list of offenses last year included everything from indecent exposure to 123 instances of possession of guns and other weapons, including brass knuckles (4), knives (81) and a ninja star. * In Prince George's County, School Superintendent Jerome Clark issued a special back-to-school message warning parents to make sure their children don't take guns or other weapons to school. After a student shot a teacher in the 1993-94 school year, the school system beefed up its security program, hiring more guards, installing security cameras in school and on buses and requiring staff and students to wear photo identification cards. * In Montgomery County, a Safe Schools Hotline will let anyone call who believes he or she knows of drugs or weapons on school grounds. The district also has what it calls a "comprehensive behavior management program" in 10 schools this year that enlists all teachers and staff in monitoring students.

Many parents said they are concerned about reports of violence but wary of proposals that would result in more suspensions.

"How's that helping them?" asked Sylvia Murray, of Bladensburg, whose children attend Prince George's County schools.

But Murray said she approved of the time her son spent in in-school suspension last year, during which he was supervised by a minister with counseling skills.

"They offered him something -- my son straightened out," she said.

And come to think of it, she said, she had just watched on video the movie "Stand and Deliver," based on the true story of a tough, unusually successful teacher of troubled children: "And he took all the really bad ones and kicked them out."