District keeping safety an issue

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, April 14, 1999 | 11:28 a.m.

The highly publicized shootings at schools across the nation during the 1997-98 school year have slipped from the headlines, but some Clark County residents are still talking about school safety.

"This is not the hot-button issue it once was," said Sue Strand, president of the Clark County Classroom Teachers Association.

"But we are still seeing the records of the guns and knives they are taking out of our schools. We have first graders who are attacking their teachers. We're still seeing fights involving girls. Students should be able to walk down the hall without having someone give them a crazy look."

Strand was an organizer of the Safe Schools Forum, held at Cashman Center on Tuesday.

More than 50 people, among them police officers, teachers, parents, Realtors and retirees, gathered for a three-hour discussion about school safety.

The forum topic was developed last June in the wake of high profile school shootings from Springfield, Ore., to Jonesboro, Ark., and Fayetteville, Tenn.

Topics in one discussion group ranged from implementing dress codes to handling weapon-toting gang bangers.

"Personally, I hate uniforms," said Bonanza High School freshman Sophie DeLand, objecting to an argument that a dress code can minimize fashion pressures and eliminate gang regalia. "Having a dress code in high school is the most disgusting thing I've heard of."

One teacher described how she curbed the disruptive behavior of a gang member by humiliating him in class -- after she got approval from the boy's mother.

"There has to be a conspiracy between the parents and the teacher," said Candice Staples, an eighth grade math teacher at Cashman Middle School.

Participants echoed the concerns of educators who say they need more parent help in dealing with violent or disruptive students. But many parents say their children are beyond their control, some said.

"So many times parents say to me, 'Just take my kid to jail,'_thinspace" said Annette Mullin, a Metro Police officer. "I tell them, 'Your child just heard that you gave up on them.'"

Mullin added that often adults have no concept of what is at the root of the fears students carry. Mullin recalled one teen who said he faced death if he wore a certain pair of pants.

"I tried to explain that to his mother," Mullin said. "These problems are different than anything we dealt with when we went to school."

Participants generally agreed that schools need to give students skills to deal productively with conflicts, set very clear rules and consequences and enhance security when possible.

Most also agreed in dealing problem students one student at a time.