Educators Told To Prepare For Violence At Schools

Washington and Idaho educators here this week to discuss school violence were treated to a variation on Chicken Little’s warning.

The sky will fall.

Better have a plan.

Over two days, as many as 100 teachers and administrators grappled with the thought of guns, knives and gang graffiti in terms that made it sound as if only the luckiest school districts will skirt a rendezvous with tragedy.

“Unfortunately, violence is coming your way,” Arthur Lysne, a Spokane-based clinical social worker and critical incident debriefing specialist, told the educators.

The A.A. Cleveland Conference, sponsored by Washington State University’s College of Education, also featured the wisdom of those who had weathered some of the region’s worst cases of school violence, including the 1996 shooting of three students and a teacher in Moses Lake.

“Have a crisis plan,” warned David Rawls, former Moses Lake superintendent and now superintendent of Coeur d’Alene schools, “and don’t leave it on a shelf - have it somewhere in your heart.”

Individual cases like the Moses Lake shootings aside, it was not clear whether school violence is actually on the rise.

The National Center for Education Statistics has documented a sharp rise in the number of secondary teachers who said moderate or serious physical conflicts among students were a problem. The percentage rose from 30 percent in 1990-91 to nearly 40 percent in 1993-94, the last year for which figures were available.

But researchers at last year’s convention of the American Psychological Association reported that some surveys of school violence may make it seem worse than it is.

In Idaho, the state Department of Education documented 48 cases of firearms, knives and other weapons on school grounds in 1995-96. The department has no figures from other years for comparison.

In Washington State, reported weapons incidents dropped from 3,018 in 1993-94 to 2,144 two years later. Educators attributed the drop to increased discipline and greater interaction between law enforcement, social service and school professionals.

The fear of violence on school grounds, well founded or not, is a major worry for parents and students. A 1994 Gallup poll found it is the No. 1 educational concern among Americans.

That fear has a very real effect on the school environment, said William Miller, superintendent of the Wahluke (Wash.) School District.

“If the children don’t believe they’re safe, they’re going to bring maybe pepper spray,” he said. “The next person’s going to bring a knife. And then before you know it, somebody’s thinking about bringing a gun to school. So they have to be safe and they also have to feel safe.”

Superintendents speaking at the conference offered a number of suggestions for improving school safety. They included video surveillance systems, painting over graffiti before students see it, and student name tags that make it easier to identify off-campus trouble makers.

Above, all, Pasco Superintendent George Murdock prized a disaster plan that is clear to everyone.

“It is not only well defined, it is well used,” he said. “When there’s a shooting, when there’s a death, there aren’t a lot of phone calls. People know what to do.”

After a tragedy, said Coeur d’Alene’s Rawls, it is important to get back to the routine, as counterintuitive as that might seem.

“People often think, ‘Gosh, we’ve had this horrible thing happen, surely we can’t have school,”’ he said.

“That’s where kids receive professional care and help and support from their peers and from the professionals that are there, the teachers and caregivers in general. If you left the students at home while their parents go off to work, it’s much more stressful.”

, DataTimes