Zero unsafe schools? Officially, yes

Tammy Davis Kamotto worries about her son Vincent, who has brought home talk of threats from kids in science and a smack to the back of his head during gym.

The 12-year-old’s school, Columbia Middle in DeKalb County, has “no bullying” signs and security officers, Kamotto said, but she still doesn’t feel it’s safe for him. “I just don’t understand how all this stuff happens to children,” she said.

Other students have encountered trouble there, too. State statistics show that last year, the school recorded 335 infractions for fighting, 180 for threatening, and eight for battery. Only one school statewide, in Bibb County, reported more fighting offenses.

In schools across the metro area, a student was accused of handling a gun nearly once every three school days last year, state data show. Write-ups for robbery were only slightly less common. Statewide, public schools reported thousands of drug- and sex-related offenses and physical assaults.

But for three years running, no school has landed on the list of unsafe schools Georgia must keep under federal law.

The No Child Left Behind Act said students attending “persistently dangerous” schools should get a chance to transfer. The provision aimed to give students an escape hatch and prod administrators to address severe discipline problems. Yet in Georgia and some other states, the effort has become nearly meaningless in practice.

Georgia is among the states that define “persistently dangerous” so strictly that it would take three years of extraordinarily violent crimes, or an inordinately high number of offenses such as drugs or weapons, for a school to get the designation. Two schools did in 2005, but none has since.

As a result, the only way parents can secure a safety-related transfer is to wait for their child to become a victim of a crime. Victims can transfer under the law.

Columbia Middle Principal Stephanie Amey didn’t dispute the statistics. But she said her school reports every incident — it logs a “fighting” offense, for instance, whenever a student touches another in anger — and doesn’t tolerate bullying. Her district, DeKalb, encourages schools to diligently report disciplinary cases.

At Columbia, Amey said students have adult mentors, and beginning this year, even the eighth-graders must walk in lines between classes. The school was bright, quiet and orderly one recent day.

“We’re a great school, and we’re a safe school,” she said.

To be sure, not every parent interviewed said his or her child had run into problems there. But Kamotto said she is planning her own transfer for Vincent. “I really want my son in a private school,” she said.

Federal auditors have criticized Georgia and other states for not setting standards for the persistently dangerous label at a “reasonably obtainable” level.

In Georgia, serious crimes such as aggravated child molestation or aggravated sexual battery qualify, but the more common aggravated assault does not. The state also mandates that for an infraction to count, a disciplinary tribunal must have been held — which hasn’t always happened.

As a result, even a school where fights, robberies and nondisfiguring attacks took place every day wouldn’t make the list.

A federal inspector general said in 2007 that because schools nationwide appear not to be including all violent offenses, Congress should enact reforms. Any incident considered violent under state law should count, the office said, and disciplinary action should not be a qualifier. One year of problems should be enough, it added.

Nationwide, fewer than 50 schools have been identified as persistently dangerous each year since 2003.

Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center in California, said he had hoped No Child Left Behind would help make schools safer. But states’ criteria proved so weak that even in some large states such as California, no school ever met the standard.

“We know they’re not all safe,” he said. “There needs to be some more realistic and national standards on what an unsafe school is, instead of leaving it up to the state.”

Georgia education officials say they have stepped up training to make disciplinary reporting more accurate and are helping schools learn to stop and prevent violence. State spot-checks of systems’ statistics look for problems with reporting or for high numbers of offenses.

“We do look at the discipline data and if we see something that the local system needs to look at, we have made those phone calls,” said Garry McGiboney, state associate superintendent.

But the definition has stood. On its Web site, the education department said the educators and parents who developed it wanted to ensure it was neither too lenient nor too harsh.

Herb Garrett, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, said he, like many educators, feels the label is counterproductive and can unfairly punish schools instead of assisting them. He served on the committee that set the criteria for “persistently dangerous.”

“The only saving grace was to make sure the definitions were strict enough and required a high enough level to be met that they just did identify schools that are persistently dangerous,” he said.

A federal advisory committee has recommended replacing “persistently dangerous” with a less alarming term, such as a school “watch list,” and creating standard, broader measures of school safety. But the reform is tied to other accountability provisions stalled in Congress.

Georgia data on all school disciplinary actions – not just those tied to the unsafe schools list – shows some serious offenses rising and others declining in 2008.

Battery, knife possession and serious bodily injury dropped compared with the prior year. Sex offenses — which include consensual sexual contact, indecent exposure and obscenity – were up. Handgun possession and robbery also rose. Overall, disciplinary incidents were down statewide.

Although unsafe-schools reports are posted on the state education Web site, the more detailed discipline data is not. Gwinnett parent Cindi Wilson said parents need to know what disciplinary activity is going on because their children can be directly affected. “Drug activity, gang activity,” she said, “none of it is indirect.”

“My point is, if parents were more informed about what’s going on in schools, they would be more involved, and they could be part of the process to find a solution,” she said.

Questions about schools’ safety data have persisted. News articles and audits have noted discrepancies between school and police records. Some schools have tripped over data entry. And questions have arisen about classifying incidents.

Lawyer Randee Waldman said she is representing a DeKalb middle schooler accused of patting a girl on the bottom in gym class, which the school classified as a sex-related offense. She said parents looking at discipline statistics should be aware that they cover a wide range of lapses — many of which are relatively benign. “An allegation of a pat on the butt shouldn’t scare a parent away from sending their child to school,” she said. “We need to be cautious about how people categorize certain offenses.”

McGiboney, the state associate superintendent, said training over the past two years has improved the reporting of offenses. The state does about eight or 10 spot-checks a year to ensure systems’ data are correct.

Sessions have covered violence intervention and prevention. McGiboney said he has trained every transportation director, for instance, on handling bullying on the bus.

He said his office contacts schools that report a single violation. It also looks at several dozen systems’ disciplinary incidents and works with schools that appear to have a problem.

The two schools on the unsafe list in 2004-2005 — Long Middle in Atlanta and Murphey Middle in Richmond County — came off the list the next year.

Linda Steindorf, a Roswell parent, said she can see how reporting discipline can be tricky. Some administrators may be lenient when middle schoolers get rambunctious, for instance, while others may punish every incident. Steindorf said she’s also heard stories about teachers being encouraged to resolve problems in the classroom to avoid reporting them.

“This is such a gray zone,” she said. “It’s, ‘Where do you want to put the line?’ “

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DESIGNATED DANGER

Georgia defines a persistently dangerous school as any school that has for three years in a row:

• One or more students found by a tribunal to have committed aggravated battery, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sexual battery, aggravated sodomy, armed robbery, arson, kidnapping, rape, voluntary manslaughter or murder on campus or at a school-sanctioned event.

• At least 2 percent of students are found violating school rules related to non-felony drugs, felony drugs, felony weapons or terroristic threats.

• A combination of the two measures

Source : Georgia Department of Education