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Chapter III

LEVELS

Faculty members and students are presented with security problems peculiar to the grade level of their school. Certain problems are often more acute at one level than at others. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the most common of these problems and to offer specific recommendations for coping with them.

The trend toward non-traditional age and grade organization makes it necessary for UFT members to be aware of all the types of problems discussed in this chapter.

PRIMARY LEVEL

Statistics demonstrate that this level has a higher percentage of adult-perpetrated incidents than the other levels. Criminals act on an attractiveness/vulnerability equation. To the criminal, the elementary school is a building populated by children, women with money and, all too often, inadequate security.

Entrance Security and Visitor Screening:

Special emphasis, therefore, must be placed on entrance security and visitor screening. Because there is a great deal of in-and-out traffic involving children and parents, confusion can hamper the best plans. Special attention should be given to morning, lunchtime and dismissal procedures. In addition, frequent exit door checks should be part of the routine security procedures. (See School Safety Plans.)

Parent-Teacher Conference:

From time to time, parents of elementary school pupils may wish to discuss a child’s problems and progress with the teacher. In some schools, parents are sent to the classroom whenever they appear in the building, but this practice violates Special Circular #4—"Uniform Visitor Control Procedures." Regulations require that no one may visit a classroom without an appointment. Visitors should be given a color-coded pass specific to the floor. Safety officers and secretaries should be aware of the mood and emotional state of visitors and act accordingly.

There are several reasons for following these procedures. First, a teacher who must deal with a visitor cannot at the same time attend to what is going on in the class. Therefore, everyone is shortchanged. Second, an effective parent-teacher conference requires suitable conditions including sufficient time and privacy. When such conditions are not present, misunderstandings and altercations can develop. Also, the presence of adults in instructional areas can provide a form of camouflage allowing potential intruders to proceed undetected.

In summary, it is important to appropriately structure parent-teacher conferences. If there is an emergency requiring the teacher’s immediate presence, the class should be covered and the teacher should go to the office to meet with the parent.

Disruptive Behaviors:

It is of the utmost importance that the entire elementary school staff be aware of disruptive or unusual behavior on the part of pupils, as well as the signs of possible child abuse and neglect. Most authorities agree that early identification of difficulties and proper handling are often ways to prevent discipline problems. Remember, discipline problems left unaddressed will almost certainly become safety problems. Sometimes it becomes necessary to take decisive action for the well-being of the child and the class.

There is a teacher-initiated procedure for removing a disruptive or assaultive child from the class outlined in Appendix B in the contract, the "Disruptive Child Circular." If you have a chronically disruptive child in your class, use this procedure.

Some people discount safety concerns in elementary schools because of the age of the children. However, any elementary school teacher can tell you that young children sometimes have temper tantrums that are difficult to handle. Many teachers are injured every year by elementary school children. The crisis intervention techniques described in the classroom section in Chapter II are especially suited to elementary schools.

Careful planning of varied activities for younger children is important not only for learning, but also for preventing disruptive behavior that may result from restlessness.

On-going safety awareness:

Safety practices should be integrated into the school program. It is simply not enough to have the local police officer come in once a year to remind children not to get into strangers’ cars. The number of sex crimes, kidnappings and other crimes against children is growing at an alarming rate.

All schools should conduct an ongoing prevention program including:
Student safety awareness.
Parent involvement.
Cooperation with the police and other agencies.
Development of block-watchers groups.

In-school procedures for protecting the safety of children should be part of the daily routine. The use of the room pass should be kept to a minimum. When children are sent from a classroom, they should always go in pairs. The use of student monitors should be limited to essential tasks. The school should begin an alert procedure when a child fails to return to his or her room within five minutes. The policy of not releasing children to anyone other than a custodial parent or guardian should be strictly followed.

SECONDARY LEVEL

Middle and high schools are organized along departmental lines so that students travel from class to class. The ages range from early adolescence to early adulthood. The behavior problems encountered range from reckless conduct, such as running and shoving in crowded hallways and stairwells, to possession and use of drugs and weapons.

Most educators agree that the physical and psychological changes experienced by middle school students can complicate safety problems. Physical energy and activity levels of this age group are peaking. Running and fighting are common behaviors. Impulses often govern and there is sometimes little consideration of consequences. There may be a determined effort to act "grown-up." This may mean experimentation with drugs, tobacco and alcohol. It may involve carrying and using weapons. In many areas, there is constant testing and pushing of boundaries. A sound way to handle these issues is to set clearly understood standards and limits and to rigorously enforce them.

Some of the basic safety concerns on the secondary level are:

Weapons possession.
Classroom confrontation.
Large group area safety.
Class cutting and resultant hall wandering.
Intergroup tensions and conflicts.

Weapons Possession:

A teacher who is aware of a student with a weapon should get help immediately. Try not to alarm the class or the student with the weapon. The best case scenario is to get the student away from the book bag if that is where the weapon is. If the weapon is on his person, try to get the offender out of the room, where he can be surrounded by safety officers and other appropriate staff. Low-key, calm responses will help assure a satisfactory outcome.

Classroom Confrontations:

Classroom confrontations between and among students or between student and staff members can be successfully managed without injury if the following are in place:

Staff members trained in violence prevention skills.
A well-functioning peer mediation or other conflict resolution program.
A well publicized and enforced discipline code.
A crisis plan involving rapid communication (via intercom phone or public address talkback system) and rapid response by safety and/or other designated staff.

Large Group Safety:

We discussed some aspects of safety in large group areas in an earlier section. However, secondary school cafeteria safety requires some additional information. A lunch period in a middle school and the lower high school grades can be 45 minutes of kinetic chaos. This is especially true when students cannot use yards or other play areas to burn off surplus energy. Here are some additional tips:

Separate entrance from exit doors.
Stagger food line-ups by class or section.
Control and monitor access to bathrooms.
Provide clearly marked line-up areas for food or bathrooms, i.e., use floor markings or theater-type chains to reduce pushing and shoving.
Make every effort to clean up after each period. Wading ankle-deep in garbage is not conducive to an enjoyable lunch or good order.
Consider using music and displays of student artwork to improve the atmosphere.
Make a public address system or bullhorn and an intercom phone available to the person in charge in case of an emergency.

Hall Control:

The very size of high schools causes security and safety problems. Some floors run a quarter of a mile around, and many schools have 30 or more exits. The majority of high schools have more than 2,000 pupils on register. Some have multiple sessions, which cause further complications.

These factors give rise to certain problems. Any staff member knows only a small percentage of the student body and, therefore, any student prone to anti-social behavior has an effective cloak of anonymity. Also, intruders can blend in with the student population. Statistics show that many of the incidents affecting secondary school staff do not occur in classrooms and do not involve persons known to the staff member. These are transactions between strangers.

The most obvious and frequent symptom of a troubled secondary school is the absence of effective procedures to deal with cutting and hall control. The hall population in any school represents a spectrum. The majority of hall-roaming students are there simply because of the lack of enforcement. A small minority are potential troublemakers who use the hall, stairwells or bathrooms to assault, rob and harass other students. They may invade and disrupt classrooms and engage in vandalism. The cutting students are missing instruction, and they frequently disrupt the education of those who want to learn. Hall control procedures should be flexible in order to deal with the numbers involved. The evidence of drug, alcohol and other criminal activities, as well as other situations, can change over time.

Here are components that have proven effective:
School safety officers should enforce normal hall control procedures.
Procedures should be geared to the individual student and his or her violation of school rules. Stating "you don’t belong here—get to class" ensures only mobility, not compliance.
If necessary, patrols should be large enough to give security staff the confidence needed to take action.

Schools have experimented with various "roundup" strategies. The most common is the sweep, which brings or sends wanderers to a central room for processing. A variation simply requires a radio call to the central office by the security officer for follow up.

One point is essential for success for any hall control plan: Students and parents should be informed in advance. There should be no surprises.

Don’t expect a perfect solution. However, when schools have implemented these plans on a consistent basis, there has been noticeable improvement within a week or so.

Intergroup Tensions and Conflicts:

Sometimes tensions between groups of different ethnic and national origins can lead to friction and widespread disruption. While we can take measures to end the turmoil, it is more important to establish an effective human relations program to prevent tensions from escalating in the first place.

Key to the success of such a program is a good human relations team, which should include a staff member serving as program coordinator. In high schools, the coordinator of student affairs should be a team member. Deans, guidance counselors and teachers should be included.

The team must gather information and be knowledgeable in the following areas:
Comparative size of potential rival groups.
Established "turf patterns" (i.e., where each of the groups tends to congregate).
Official and unofficial leadership of various groups.
Identification of those who gravitate to occurrences of conflict.
Awareness of subgroupings, gang membership and the like.

It is of great importance that the administration establish and support an effective program. Success is based on good organization and rapid, easy communications between the team members and the administration. Likewise, no human relations program can be effective without the support and cooperation of the faculty. The staff must be kept informed of problems and progress.

Operation of a successful program should include:

Establishment of a student leadership committee representing various groups.
Regular meetings of the leadership committee with team members in a designated room. These meetings are aimed at reducing tensions.
Regular feedback by committee members to their groups.
During impending or actual conflicts, the leadership committee acts like a rumor clinic and a conduit providing accurate information to all concerned groups. (In a tense situation, a bump in the hall can be rumored to be murder.)

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