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THE BATTAL
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Schools safe, threats remain
no re heli
By Ben Feller
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Only 52
the nation’s 91,000 public
drools are labeled persistently
angerous by their states, findings
hat allow students in those few
hools to transfer to safer places
ut deny a similar option for tens
f millions of other children.
Feeling unsafe
While violent crimes at schools
are decreasing overall, students
say they don’t feel secure as
weapons use and threats
increase.
Students grade nine through 12
who reported being threatened
or injured with a weapon on
school property
I The lack of a label does not
Lean a school is without crime,
but rather that there is not
YEAR
2001
PERCENT
8.9
Lough to merit the designation.
1999
7.7
[There were nearly 700,000 vio
1997
7.4
lent crimes in America’s schools
1995
8.4
in 2000, the last year for which
government numbers were
1993
7.3
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The new school year marks
the first time that states must
define and identify their most
dangerous schools and let all
students at those schools enroll
elsewhere in their district. Most
states have responded by declar
ing they have no schools fitting
that description.
Forty-four states and the
District of Columbia reported
not a single unsafe schools. The
exceptions were Pennsylvania
(28), Nevada (eight). New
Jersey (seven), Texas (six). New
York (two) and Oregon (one).
The numbers may change after
final state reviews or appeals.
At a time when campuses use
a range of tools to halt crime,
from metal detectors to full-time
police officer, 99.9 percent of
schools got passing safety grades,
based on self-reported data.
I don’t think most parents
would be surprised to find out that
schools aren’t persistently danger
ous because they believe their
schools are safe,” said Jo Loss,
mother of two public-school chil
dren in Castro Valley, Calif., and a
leader of the state’s PTA.
The order to designate unsafe
schools is part of federal law
designed to hold schools
accountable and give students
| choices. But to some school
; advocates, the small number
identified is so implausible it
renders the ordered assessment
meaningless.
“The states are sending a
false sense of security to par
ents, and it creates a laxity
among educators in terms of
school safety,” said Kenneth
Trump, a national school safety
consultant who has worked with
officials in more than 35 states.
“It’s like a government Grade A
stamp of approval saying every
thing is safe and fine.”
To get the label in
Washington state, for example, a
1,000-student school would
have to expel three students per
year for gun violations and 10
additional students per year for
other violent offenses — and
Number of violent crimes
against students age 12 to 18
at school or on their way to
and from school
1.5 minion
SOURCE: National Center
for Education Statistics
AP
that would have to happen for
three straight years.
Washington’s policy was
purposely set high because of
the “significant consequences of
being defined as persistently
dangerous,” said Martin Mueller
of the state’s Office of the
Superintendent of Public
Instruction.
Connecticut gives schools
three years to fix problems.
“If they do not improve, then
they can be named, but we are
not automatically condemning a
school,” said Thomas Murphy of
the state’s Education
Department.
Most states have determined
that to merit the dangerous
label, schools must meet at least
one threshold, such as student
gun violations or expulsions
based on violent behavior.
Typically, states tied the mini
mum number of incidents to
enrollment — requiring a higher
number at larger schools — and
they only count schools that
show trouble over two years or
three years.
The states also based their
definitions on the most serious
crimes: murder, arson, robbery,
kidnapping. A dangerous envi
ronment, not just unacceptable
behavior, is the target, said Bill
Modzeleski, school safety direc
tor for the Education
Department.
Teen shot by officers intended suicide
By Nicholas K. Geranos
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
; SPOKANE, Wash. — A troubled teenager who
was critically wounded by officers after he fired a
gun at school was trying to commit suicide, police
said Tuesday.
Sean Fitzpatrick, 16, left a page-and-a-half sui
cide note at home before Monday’s shooting, say
ing he wanted to be shot by police, police Chief
Roger Bragdon said. He also made suicidal state
ments during the 20 minutes he talked with a
police negotiator, Bragdon said.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the young
man intended to commit suicide by having us do
it,” Bragdon said.
Bragdon declined to reveal the contents of the
note, saying only the teen was explicit about his
emotional pain and depression. Bragdon could not
say why the student chose his high school for the
showdown.
Fitzpatrick was shot three times by SWAT team
officers who fired almost simultaneously when the
student raised a 9mm semiautomatic handgun
toward them, Bragdon said. Fitzpatrick was shot in
the jaw, stomach and arm and was in critical con
dition Tuesday at Sacred Heart Medical Center.
Bragdon said the suicide note was clear
Fitzpatrick did not intend to harm others.
Fitzpatrick’s parents, Angel Fitzpatrick and
Linda Schearing of Fairfield, a town 30 miles
south of Spokane, were brought to the school but
had not spoken to their son, officials said.
The parents apologized to the community
Tuesday in a statement released by family attorney
Carl Hueber. The boy had no previous criminal
problems, and his parents were cooperating with
police, Hueber said in the statement.
“He was apparently suffering from severe men
tal problems which had not been recognized by his
family, friends or teachers,” the statement said.
Bragdon said Fitzpatrick entered a science
classroom shortly after 11 a.m. Monday, ordered a
student teacher and several students to leave and
fired once into a wall. He took no hostages.
The boy also sprayed the room with retardant
from fire extinguishers. Officers could see the boy
because he had propped open a door, and they
talked with him, Bragdon said.
However, Fitzpatrick suddenly stopped talking,
put on his jacket, and drew the pistol from a pants
pocket, Bragdon said.
“They knew it couldn’t be stopped,” Bragdon
said of the shooting.
Authorities said it is too early to say if
Fitzpatrick will face criminal charges if he recovers.
School Superintendent Brian Benzel cited
privacy laws in refusing to release any informa
tion about Fitzpatrick’s school performance and
activities.
biiitni
L r-
Thursday, September 25, 2003
#
“When you see what
Congress said in the legislation,
then clearly there probably
aren’t as many persistently dan
gerous schools as the public
may believe,” he said.
Marsha Smith, a physical
education teacher in Rockville,
Md., and a consultant on
teenage health and school safe
ty, added, “The public may
believe that schools are danger
ous, but it’s quite the opposite.
Schools are the safest place for
students to be.”
Government numbers show
that students age 12 to 18 are
facing fewer violent crimes at
school — 699,800 in 2000,
down 51 percent since 1993. Yet
an increasing number of high
school students, almost one in
10, reported being threatened or
injured with a weapon at school
in 2001.
The law allows students who
are victims of a violent crime at
school to transfer, regardless of
whether their school is persist
ently dangerous.
California, whose 8,000-plus
schools are more than in other
state, listed none as unsafe.
Neither did Colorado, where
two young gunmen in 1999
killed 13 people and wounded
more than 20 others before
killing themselves at Columbine
High School outside Denver.
In Philadelphia, school offi
cials say they are paying a price
for aggressively disciplining
misbehaving students. The city
had 27 of the state’s 28 persist
ently dangerous schools, which
unfairly gave them all a “big
black eye,” said Paul Valias, the
chief executive for the school
district. Valias has asked the
state for a one-year exemption
from having to offer transfers to
students.
William Craigo cannot think
of a single violent crime, let
alone a pattern of dangerous
behavior, during his eight years
as principal at Terrace Hills
Middle School in El Paso. Yet
the school is one of six campus
es out of 7,734 in Texas deemed
persistently dangerous.
Craigo blames faulty school
data, including rock-throwing
incidents counted as serious
weapons violations. El Paso
school district leaders, in disbe
lief that four of their schools got
tagged as unsafe, have appealed
to the state.
“It’s a shame people didn’t
take a look around before they
put such a heavy-duty label on
us,” Craigo said. “You look at
the inner cities — much bigger
cities than El Paso that didn’t get
named — and it kind of makes
you wonder: What’s going on
here?”
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