This fight was more savage than anything Brooklyn Harper had ever seen at Westlake High School.
Hearing a call for help, Harper and other students burst into the neighboring science classroom to find one of their schoolmates lying on the floor while three others pummeled his body. Another was jumping on his face, leaving him with a broken jaw and nose and bleeding from his mouth.
The class was in chaos. As the substitute teacher tried to restore order, students pried the victim away from his attackers. Five accused assailants -- all freshmen and sophomores, including one girl -- later were arrested and charged.
“The only thing I could think of,” said Harper, 16, “is what could he have done so wrong that would make them beat him like that.”
Fulton school security officials are still dissecting Monday’s attack and trying to determine what lessons can be learned. The violent attack underscores the difficulty of keeping students in super-sized schools across metro Atlanta safe despite the presence of video cameras, school resources officers and classroom panic buttons.
Fulton, a 93,000-student district, has its own police department, with 68 officers stationed throughout approximately 100 schools. Three were on campus at Westlake the day of the beating. And Fulton has added money for school security in recent years, including a $600,000 grant for training school personnel.
Serious violent offenses, such as aggravated battery, armed robbery and arson, are rare at metro Atlanta schools, according to state data on crime in schools. Fulton, for instance, had none last year. Most offenses categorized as serious involve drugs, weapons and “terroristic threats.” The total number of serious offenses rose in the Fulton and Atlanta systems from 2009 to 2011, while falling in Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett districts.
Lesser displinary incidents such as fighting, disorderly conduct and “threat intimidation” are reported separately. DeKalb had the highest number of fighting reports last school year, at 4,162, followed by Atlanta at 2,385, Clayton at 2,191, Gwinnett at 2,171 and Fulton at 1,493.
Mark Muma, Fulton’s director of safety and security, said each year the district reviews its data and tries to figure out how to improve. But he said the increased use of cell phones and video creates another challenge for school personnel. Arguments or threats can begin off campus and bleed into the school day when students interact face-to-face.
The Atlanta system’s increase in serious offenses also is largely due to to non-felony drug cases and threats. Unlike Fulton, however, it is also dealing with budget cuts that have trimmed the ranks of school resource officers.
Fourteen officers now keep watch over the APS’s almost 100 school sites. Seven years ago, the 50,000-student district employed almost 20 detectives and the budget was twice what it is now, said Marquenta Sands, director of school security. The district fills gaps by employing about 65 off-duty Atlanta police officers.
APS Superintendent Erroll Davis said he plans to almost double the district’s security force using an additional $1.5 million. First he plans community meetings to see what parents want schools to look like.
“I want to avoid turning schools into police states,” Davis said. “There are other areas such as violence prevention, anti-bullying where monies can be spent to make the school safer.”
Gwinnett, the state’s largest district with 162,000 students, has 23 officers, one assigned to each of the 18 clusters, and another that rotates depending on where the support is needed, said spokesman Jorge Quintana. The district added an officer in 2010 when a new high school opened in the northern part of the county.
Cobb and DeKalb have all trimmed school security budgets, though sources from both districts say they’ve tried not to reduce police presence at schools. Cobb has 42 officers, including at least one at all of its 16 high schools and two each at seven larger schools. DeKalb has 75 officers roaming each middle and high school, and every school has two campus supervisors that check people in and prevent trespassers, district spokesman Walter Woods said.
Budget and staff cuts for the 2010-2011 school year did not include school resource officers, he said.
In Cobb, the state’s second-largest district, there were three incidents of aggravated battery in 2009 and none since, according to the Georgia Department of Education. Two of those incidents were at Osborne High School in South Cobb.
Osborne students said occasional fights occur -- the Cobb system had 1,223 fighting reports last year, according to the state figures -- but none of several interviewed outside the school recently recalled anything serious. Junior Tiffany Smith and seniors Trey Waller and Jahnell Harden each recalled different fistfights between girls. One was in a hallway a year or two ago, another was in a classroom last year and another was in the cafeteria soon after this semester started.
“It didn’t last that long, like five seconds at most,” Waller said of last year’s classroom scrap. The teacher broke it up, with the help of students, he said. “Fights get broken up quick around here.”
Garry McGiboney, associate state school superintendent for policy and charter schools, said student-on-student attacks generally occur before or after school and, if they’re actually in the building, they’re in a hallway. McGiboney spent 20 years over security in DeKalb County Schools and said most of the violence and discipline issues are focused at the high school level, particularly ninth and 10th grade.
“We still have fights, students bullying each other, picking on each other,” McGibony said. “Schools have to be very vigilant. There’s going to be conflict. The key is to interrupt the conflict before it escalates.”
It’s unclear if that could have been done in the Westlake beating. Details about motive and any previous disputes aren’t known.
The substitute teacher reacted appropriately by using a call button to seek help, principal Grant Rivera said last week, though he acknowledged the school’s medical staff should have sought outside help for the injured victim sooner.
Five students jumped the victim as he sat in a science class after lunch, Rivera said. Some of the attackers were also students in the class, while others entered the room to join the fray.
The mother of the victim, whose first name is Meredith, is not sure she will send her children back to public school. She agreed to be interviewed only if her last name was not used because of concerns that would also identify her children.
“Since we have been going through this, I have had people come up to me and tell me that their child had been bullied, but didn’t realize it,” Meredith said. “How many children have been impacted by events like this?”
Brooklyn Harper and other students at Westlake are trying to move forward.
On Thursday, Harper got some poster board and crafted a get well card for the victim. She was trying to get as many of her Westlake school mates to sign and deliver it.
“I am going to make it real nice for him,” Harper said. “Westlake is a school of excellence and a lot of people are concerned about how we are portrayed. That fight was not us.”
-- Staff writers Ty Tagami, Nancy Badertscher and D. Aileen Dodd contributed to this story.
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