The Virginian-Pilot
©
NORFOLK
The School Board has agreed to continue equipping civilian school security personnel with pepper spray at least until January, when it will discuss the issue again.
School security guards used spray three times between Oct. 19 and 26, intervening in a Lafayette-Winona Middle School cafeteria fight, a Blair Middle student altercation, and a Granby High incident in which one student tried to attack another.
Pepper spray was used six times last year, 17 times in 2009-10 and 13 times in 2008-09.
"Unfortunately, we get into situations occasionally where it takes direct force to be able to maintain order," Associate Superintendent Michael Spencer told the board Wednesday night.
A report to the board by the Department of Pupil Personnel argued that the weapon is a necessary last resort to quell student violence, protect pupils and help security guards avoid getting hurt while ending fights.
Chairman Kirk Houston said safety concerns are highly important but that parents had raised other issues with him as well.
"There is some concern about the ethical nature of using OC spray on kids in schools," he said, using the shorthand term for oleoresin capsicum, or pepper spray. Houston said hiring more security staff - who were cut by the board to save money two years ago - would be a better alternative.
Other board members, including Brad Robinson, said the reality is that some situations in schools call for extraordinary measures such as pepper spray.
No other South Hampton Roads school system equips its security employees with pepper spray. Other divisions say there's no need to arm security guards because their secondary schools already have resource officers - sworn police officers carrying standard-issue police armament, including pepper spray.
No one on the Norfolk board asked Wednesday how neighboring divisions keep order without giving guards chemical spray.
Nor did any board member ask questions about the Virginia Center for School Safety, which discourages pepper spray, handcuffs and "force devices" by security guards because of liability risk to divisions. The agency gives divisions the discretion to decide which equipment their security personnel may carry.
Norfolk approved pepper spray for its school security officers in 1997 and reaffirmed that policy in 2004.
School security personnel get regular training that includes pepper spray. The last training was Nov. 7, when exercises included role playing for dealing with food fights, using handcuffs and chemical spray, fights, and random searches for contraband.
Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com
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Norfolk Public Schools
If the Street Trash wants to act up and not comply with the Security Officers then they need to be pepper sprayed. Lets face it, The Norfolk Public Schools have to Hell anyway..
At least Brad Robinson has a brain
Pepper spray is a necessity in the public schools these days. As for parents complaining, let them home school if they don't like it.
If more of these parents were raising their kids (and if more of these kids actually had two good parents) pepper spray wouldn't be needed.
Why should teachers and guards have to be assaulted themselves to break up fights? When a security guard or teacher has to break up a fight without something like pepper spray, they frequently end up in harms way themselves. I'd like to see these parents volunteer to go up to their child's school and get assaulted by teenagers all day.
Parent volunteers anybody?
http://rethinkingpublicschools.blogspot.com/
Ha
These "kids" that are being pepper sprayed because of their inability to behave themselves in public, are the same kids standing out on street corners selling weed, robbing people at night, and creating mayhem in our neighborhoods. The decent kids are not in danger of being sprayed. Any sympathy for the thugs is misguided.....
behavior
nearly every day on my way home I encounter a certain Norfolk school bus with kids on it. My God, the behavior, the noise, the motions -- and they're on a bus. I cannot imagine how they behave in school.
Arm them with-
Paddles!!! I know that old school, but it use to work.
I can see those coming back ...
… when they start making them out of tufu.
a big difference
first thing these people are not security guards there security officers, second thing im all for oc spray,why? because these kids are outof control and they take no prisoners, they have no respect for adults,ive seen assaults,kids cussing adults out from the principal on down to the teacher etc. middle school is the worst and the school system is giving the power to the children,so how would you break up a fight without the correct tools? i dont believe for a moment these officers spray just to be spraying like i tell my children who attends nps,if you see trouble you leave,if you standing around watching like most kids,you deserve to be sprayed or hurt because you shouldof left the area.. these kids are taking over!!! im sure the officers give warn
The real answer to "OC"
Get rid of all the "security guards".
Just use 'school resource officers'. Sworn LEOS's. Who have weapons. And use Tasers too.
That's the real solution to the Norfolk "security guard" spraying issue.
Students see you mean business if they know they are gonna' be jailed. And there is less liability with more of a professional.
Too easy.
Not as easy as
Giving responsibility and authority back to the teachers and principles, allowing corporal punishment to be applied where necessary to elementary school kids while they're young enough to benefit from it, and removing board members who don't back their teachers when challenged by "not my Johnny" type parents. No guard, SRO or pepper spray required. Worked for the first 200 years of US public education. THAT would be easy.
Great Idea..
Since SROs make about 2 to 3 times what a school security guard makes,you are right, let's replace the security with about 4 police officers (per high school). This would be at the taxpayer's expense and would be the perfect solution. Again, this would be like building prisons, putting more money into the problem and not a solution.