Safe at School: Avoiding a Double Failure

The principal rattled off the names of the gangs active at his school — and he did it as easily as easily as he might have recited the names of the other schools in his district.

The Low Profiles. The Hundreds. The Duece-8s. The Black Gangster Disciples. The Crips. The Bloods.

It’s not just gangs that students have to worry about. A former female student had tried to recruit fellow high school girls to become prostitutes. Others were contending with rampant drug use, theft of their belongings and, of course, the age-old problem of bullying, according to an article in The Seattle Times.

This is not an isolated problem — and school safety issues are not exclusive to urban districts. In 2003, the National Center for Education Statistics tallied the violent crimes in our nation’s public schools, reported in that year, finding:

• 5,000 instances of rape or other types of sexual battery.
• 12,000 incidents of physical attacks or fights involving weapons.
• 806,000 other fights or physical attacks
• 23,000 robberies

Is it any wonder that nearly one million American students will stay home from school for at least one day this month because they do not feel safe?

Among those students are many who will miss multiple days because they fear for their personal safety. Some will bring a weapon to school in an attempt to protect themselves. And some will conclude that the safest thing to do will be to simply drop out of school altogether.

This is a national tragedy.

We can talk a lot about how to make our schools safer. And, of course, we should. But since we haven’t yet figured out how to keep drugs, gangs, weapons and bullying off campus, we need to have a serious conversation about how to serve those students who drop out because they are simply too afraid to go to school.

While we’re at it, we also need to talk about how to serve students who reacted to a threat against their person by bringing a weapon to school themselves, or throwing a punch when it got too much. Of the tens of thousands of kids suspended or expelled each year, how many were reacting to the stimulus of fear or intimidation? We live in a world in which “zero tolerance” has become the default position for discipline and discipline has become synonymous with punishment. More often than not, when a student is suspended or expelled, they don’t come back. Are we ready to abandon these kids for life over one poor decision?

So what can we do? Several pioneering districts have found a solution: they give dropouts and suspended/expelled students the immediate opportunity to enroll in a full-time online program that will allow them to continue working toward their diploma and to stay engaged in their education. If and when they are ready to return to campus, they come back with transcripted credits and a functional relationship with the district. If they never feel comfortable enough to return to a school building, they still have an opportunity to earn their high school diploma.

Maslow was right: Before we, as human beings, are able to do anything else, we must feel safe. Students need to feel secure at school in order to learn. If we allow — or even require — students to abandon their education because we haven’t created safe spaces for that education, then we have failed them.

Rebekah Richards is chief academic officer and principal at The American Academy, which partners with schools across the country to provide education opportunities for high school dropouts. For more information about The American Academy and its services, visit www.nodropouts.com