The Virginian-Pilot
©
NORFOLK
School security personnel should continue using pepper spray when necessary and the division should hire additional security officers to monitor students, administrators will tell the School Board tonight.
The use of pepper spray on students by security personnel came under scrutiny last month when three incidents occurred within seven days at Granby High and Lafayette-Winona and Blair middle schools. The number of students involved ranged from one at Granby to 37 who were checked by the Lafayette-Winona nurse for exposure.
Tonight's meeting will be the first time the School Board formally takes up the issue since the incidents.
A report to the board, prepared by the division's Department of Pupil Personnel, says "the use of extraordinary measures" such as pepper spray is sometimes needed to protect students and staff - and that their safety is threatened all too often.
This year, the report says, the division has had reports of bomb threats, BB guns, a severely beaten bus driver, and a student who brought a 7-inch knife to school.
The report also says pepper spray often is "a more humane option" than the physical struggles and injuries that can occur when security guards intervene in fights without the chemical.
Norfolk is the only local division that arms civilian security guards with pepper spray. Others reserve the weapon for school resource officers, who are sworn members of police departments.
Norfolk's policy contradicts recommendations from the state Center for School Safety, but the agency gives divisions discretion to decide which equipment security personnel may carry.
The division has cut its security force to 47 guards for the past two school years to balance its budget. In 2009-10, it had 60. Typically, middle schools have three guards and one police officer; high schools have four guards and one police officer. None are posted at elementary schools.
The report recommends that additional officers and training opportunities be included in next year's budget. A bigger staff would create a lower guard-to-student ratio and allow "a more realistic level of monitoring" by each security person, the document says.
Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com
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Choose Door Number 1
Ask any high school kid in Norfolk about enterning and leaving the lunch room. They will tell you that they have to use the "right door" entering and leaving lunch. Certain kids use one door and the other group uses the other door or all h---- breaks out. That is why the guards use pepper spray.
well
Schools are a war zone these days and Norfolk is just as bad as any inner city school system. Gangs have taken over the Norfolk schools and it trickles down to even the elementary schools these days. Why? Because even the parents, who are sometimes youth themselves, are involved in the gangs.
What is the alternative? Let the students kill each other?
continued....
Parents need to take an active roll in their children's education and stop expecting the school to raise their kids. I know how hard it is to have to work full time and then squeeze in family time and make sure the homework is done. But the biggest influence on a child's life is the homefront. If that's outta wack then everything else in that child's life will follow suit. Get the kids off Facebook and have them put the video game controller down and spend some time in character development. Stop putting them into the daycare center when they are infants and nurture them yourselves. Stop giving control of your kids to everyone else and take the responsability for raising them! If you do that, there won't be a need for pepper spray.
Parents are changing any time soom
Face it that's not going to happen otherwise it would have by now. I believe governmental involvement has been a large part of the problem. The government's approach isn’t surgical it is blunt and one size fits all. I’ve read countless news articles and watched news broadcasts informing the community that some over-their-head parent was charged with felony child abuse for something that should have been handled with counseling or some other lesser means. These types convictions relegate those young ignorant parents to a very difficult life by putting them further in the whole. We need to take a intelligent approach to this problem…
Many of the young people are punished already.
Born to incompetent parents, being raised in Norfolk...what are you going to do to them? Threaten to send them to Uzbecky Becky Becky Becky Stan Stan?
It's amazing how the
It's amazing how the atmosphere at school has changed. We've taken God out, teacher authority, capital punishment and turned the tables around so that the children are now in charge. I know how mundane it is when people say "well, back when I was in school.." But the sad truth is that when kids knew that there was a consequence for bad behavior, there were less behavioral problems. My 5th grade teacher hung a paddle on his wall and everyone knew that he was not afraid to, and would use it. Result? We learned so much in his class and behavior was not an issue, even from the class clown. Today, parents do not back up teachers when their children get in trouble at school. They berate the teacher for being ignorant and side with their kids.
The god stuff only goes so far.
Many kid's figure out that it's bogus whether you impose it on them or not. Superstition is not the answer. It's part of the problem.
Yea Right!
It isn’t the idea of teaching about God; it is the idea that schools have no moral compass. Since the removal of prayer, Bible reading etc…schools have fared very well as noted by the increase of school riots, inappropriate student-teacher relationships, teen pregnancies etc… What is superstitious is believing that this problem will right itself. And so far students haven’t figured that out…you put too much credence in what students will figure out on their own. Maybe that’s the problem?????