Clinton Orders Annual School Violence Reports Kentucky Slayings Spur Call On Justice, Education Departments

President Clinton described the fatal shootings in a Kentucky school hallway as an “angry wake-up call” and ordered law enforcement and education officials to start work Saturday on an annual report card on school violence.

“We know more about the overall patterns of car theft in America than we do about the harm that comes to our children at school,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address. “One thing we must do right away is to gain a much clearer view of the problem.”

A national compilation of data directed by Attorney General Janet Reno and Education Secretary Richard Riley would help policymakers, police and school officials figure out how better to curb the increasing violence in schools, Clinton said.

“High school seniors are more likely to take weapons to school than to take calculus in school. This is unacceptable,” he said.

“We simply cannot educate our children - and they cannot learn and live up to their full potential - when violence and drugs threaten their safety in schools.”

On Friday, thousands attended a memorial service for the three teenage girls shot to death Monday as they wound up their morning prayers in a school hallway in West Paducah, Ky. Clinton called the girls America’s “beautiful daughters” and said their murders represent “an insistent angry wake-up call” to adults in positions of leadership.

With local prosecutors speculating that the boy accused of the shootings may have been influenced by a movie, Clinton also said the scourge of youth violence “demands that we exercise responsibility when we create images for our children to see.”

Offering his initiative in memory of Jessica James, Kayce Steger and Nicole Hadley, he said, “Now the rest of us must do everything in our power to prevent such things from happening again.”

The Ohio River town of West Paducah “is at the center of our circle of prayers,” Clinton added in praising the community’s outpouring of forgiveness and understanding for the family of accused killer Michael Carneal, a 14-year-old freshman.