Safety first: Schools need backup when dealing with student problems

 School board member Eddie Radford mentioned something in a recent meeting that deserves mention.

He reminded the board that teachers, administrators and other personnel in the schools have the right to be safe.

The comment comes on the heels of an incident in which a fifth-grader injured an assistant principal at a local middle school -- and a school resource officer as well.

Another situation -- a fight between two girls -- prompted a substitute teacher to lose her job because she did not "properly" intervene as two high school age girls duked it out in her classroom.

Those are not the only incidents of student aggression that we hear about in county schools -- and schools all over the country. One of the chief complaints is that the hard-core students, and some who one would not think would be so hard-core, have no respect for authority and are not afraid of the repercussions for their actions.

And it is a subject not too many people know about -- or want to talk about.

That was made even more obvious when a state group recently mentioned that it was working on a motion to get school resource officers out of the state's intermediate schools -- to lessen the possibility of a child getting a record at a young age.

The idea? Administrators and teachers should be able to handle any student problem.

And it is just that kind of uninformed opinion that baffles and frustrates those who make a career out of education.

So let's talk.

Students today are different. Some of them are stronger, bigger and more aggressive, and they can do damage quickly to a fellow student or to a teacher. Inserting yourself in a student fight is fraught with risk -- liability, possible injury and escalating a situation.

Yet, teachers and administrators face these challenges often -- and have to make decisions quickly.

Having law enforcement in a school is important, both as a deterrent to more severe behavior and as a quick response when a dangerous emergency arises.

This is not a problem limited to one race or ethnicity. It is a student problem -- and some say it is getting worse.

You can chalk it up to a lot of factors -- parents who are not involved in their children's lives, broken homes, bad neighborhoods, poor role models.

And you could also say that perhaps, the modern world plays a role, too. Children have smart phones at age 10 these days.

But what you cannot logically do is live in a fantasy world where every student who gets into trouble is a misunderstood teenager who makes a mistake.

The juvenile justice system is designed to deal with youth offenders -- and to get them on the straight and narrow.

If students do not face real consequences, and know they will face them, their behavior will escalate -- and endanger other students and interfere with their classmates' ability to succeed.

And that is not fair.

We might want to believe that students are targeted by harsh school resource officers looking to "nab" an offender and to saddle a teenager with a record.

Truth is, many of these officers take the children under their wings, watch out for them, guide them and help them change their lives.

We need them in schools.

And Radford is right, we need to make sure not only our county's students, but our teachers and administrators (as well as other personnel), are safe.

And you accomplish that by knowing the real story -- not a sugar-coated candy version of what really goes on in our nation's schools.

Published in Editorials on February 14, 2015 11:14 PM