Beach, Norfolk schools worst for fights, bullying

Local students are more likely to see a weapon, be harassed or get in a fight in a Virginia Beach or Norfolk middle school than a high school.

According to safe school reports sent to the state,  schools in South Hampton Roads are hardly hotbeds of criminality. Major violent incidents with guns or knives are rare. But fights, harassment and bullying are common occurrences, and some schools see more than their share of minor weapons such as  folding knives, razor blades and party-popper fireworks.

Mardy Massey, assistant superintendent for middle schools in Virginia Beach, said these students, in the 11 to 13 age range, are “immature –  they don’t think before they act.”

The data, self-reported by principals and school officials, tallies discipline, violence and criminal incidents in schools for the 2008-09 school year.

Independence Middle School  in Virginia Beach  reported 16 weapons offenses, the highest of any school in the region.

Churchland Middle in Portsmouth had the region’s highest number of “offenses against students” last year, nearly all assaults without weapons. Bayside Middle in Virginia Beach and Northside and Norview middle schools in Norfolk recorded the highest number of fighting, harassment or bullying-related offenses. Bayside and Northside each had 238 total incidents, and Norview had 237 , more than one per school day.

Cheryl Woodhouse, principal of Independence Middle, said none of the weapons in her school were used to threaten another student. Six were poppers and one was fireworks, she said. Two were false fire alarms, which were classified as bomb threats under the state’s reporting system. Three were razors, one was a razor or box cutter and three were Swiss Army-type knives.

Robert Carrington, who has volunteered at Independence three days a week for the past three years, still feels the school is safe.

At Landstown Middle in Virginia Beach, Principal John Parkman said he’s not surprised by the numbers, which include 12 reported weapons at his school.

“With middle school kids, when they have something they think is cool, they like to bring it to school to show kids,” he said.

At Landstown, the school resource officer made reports on five weapons incidents in 2007 and 2008. Two involved pocket knives, two other ones a fabric cutter; and in the fifth incident a student brought a kitchen knife wrapped in paper to school to show a friend.

As the father of a sixth-grader, Parkman worries about middle-schoolers’ tendency to not  think ahead. “We hunt with him,” he said, adding that his son has a pocket knife. “He could just forget it in his pocket one day.”

A pocket knife in a Virginia Beach school would result in a call to the school resource officer, a disciplinary referral and a mark under “weapons” in the school’s report.

At Landstown, one student stabbed another with a pencil, and a student hit another in the head with a frozen water balloon. Both were reported as assaults with weapons.

Jeffrey Katz, a Norfolk-based clinical psychologist specializing in school-age children, said middle school is a particularly trying time for young people. “They may be feeling excluded, feeling teased, not knowing where to sit in the cafeteria because no one will sit with them,” Katz said. “They don’t know who they are yet.”

Several principals said their biggest problem is bullying.

Carrington, the Independence volunteer, agrees. He helps run a club at the school that mentors African-American boys.

“It’s one of the things we talk about. How to resolve conflicts. How to choose not to fight or act out,” he said. The numbers show that many middle school tensions also spill over into fights.

Bayside Middle reported 116 fights without injuries and 86 incidents of harassment. Norview reported 118 fights and 108 “minor physical altercations.” Northside reported mostly minor physical altercations.

Lafayette-Winona Middle in Norfolk reported the highest number of fighting offenses in the area, with 125 over the course of the year, plus 83 offenses tied to minor altercations.

The way a principal or staff member reports an angry confrontation between two students is based on how they interpret guidelines. The Virginia Department of Education has kept track of discipline, crime and violence in schools since 1991, but what information is reported and under which category has varied tremendously from place to place and over time.

Since 2001, the state has also used the data to determine which schools should be flagged as “persistently dangerous” under federal law. So far Virginia has given no school that label.

Joyce Martin, the student services data administrator for the state education department, said the last three years of data is reliable. The state conducts training on reporting for school staff and conducts spot checks.

For the past two years, the statewide trend shows a drop in offenses. And despite the higher numbers in middle schools, the serious incidents are typically in high schools.

Three handguns were reported in Norfolk schools last year, one each at Maury, Granby and Booker T. Washington high schools. One handgun was also reported at Indian River High in Chesapeake and Lakeland High in Suffolk. High schools expel and suspend the most students and rack up the highest number of alcohol, tobacco and drug violations.

The schools also can become the focus of gang activity or large fights, such as incidents that have drawn attention in recent years at Maury and Granby high schools in Norfolk and the Renaissance Academy in Virginia Beach.

The most dangerous place to be a teacher last year was an alternative middle and high school in Norfolk, the Madison Career Center. Teachers were threatened by students several dozen times, according to the school’s report. That matches with complaints of an unsafe working and learning environment by teachers at the school last year. In a survey, 86 percent of teachers disagreed with the statement: “Students feel safe in this school,” and 83 percent said teacher morale was low. The school has a new coordinator and some new staff this year.

Elementary schools report few incidents, but even the youngest students get caught up in the system. The school resource officer for Glenwood Elementary in Virginia Beach was called in 2007 to talk to a  6-year-old who showed a box cutter to his teacher.

 “I don’t know that the little ones really get the ramifications,”  Principal Susan Stuhlman said.

The following year, a  6-year-old was reported to the resource officer for John B. Dey Elementary after smashing a computer mouse into a monitor, cracking it.

Police are called and the incident is reported “because it’s in the code of conduct,”  Stuhlman said.

Dan Edwards, chair of the Virginia Beach School Board, said that principals are urged to report everything and are not evaluated based on their reports.

“You don’t know what’s going on at the district level if principals have an incentive not to report things that are in a gray area,” he said. “I think our middle schools are safe places to be.”

Parents need to look deeper than the numbers, said Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm.   

Ask your children questions, he said. “Do you feel safe in school? What do you see in the hallways? Are there places, like restrooms and parts of the courtyard, where they feel less safe and why?”

Armed with answers, parent groups should have open conversations with their children’s schools about safety. “They need to have a discussion with building principals about safety issues when there’s not a crisis,” he said.

Lauren Roth, (757) 222-5133, lauren.roth@pilotonline.com