Baltimore starts another school year preaching respect and alternatives to violence

Tawanda Hughes was a hall monitor at Reginald F. Lewis High School, one of Baltimore’s most dangerous. Her son, David Higgins, attended Thurgood Marshall and Hamilton middle schools, both among Maryland’s most violent.

Now, with a new school year beginning, mother and son are happily at Heritage High School, where Hughes said she’s allowed to deal directly with students and help calm potentially violent situations.

“Here at Heritage,” she said, “I have the opportunity to let them know I can help them. My objective is not to get them sent home or get them suspended, the bad stuff.”

No one wants to repeat the bad stuff from the city’s past school year. Especially not the violence, which included the beating of Lewis high school art teacher Jolita Berry by a student. The attack, recorded on a student’s cell phone, appeared on MySpace and outraged Americans nationwide.

Now, as more than 81,000 students return to classes, city school officials are determined to change the culture of violence and provide a safe learning environment.

“Clearly, our board of school commissioners, our CEO and the broader community are really focused on prevention efforts and early intervention rather than pouring resources into consequences,” said Jonathan Brice, head of student services for city schools.

“Our schools are doing a host of things to strengthen the relationships that teachers and students have to better prepare young people to meet the norms that we set for them,” he added.

Getting the community involved

All five of the Maryland schools labeled “persistently dangerous” under the federal No Child Left Behind Law are in the city: Hamilton and Calverton middle schools, Dr. Roland Patterson Academy, and Reginald F. Lewis and W.E.B DuBois high schools.

After the teacher’s beating in April, State Superintendent of Schools Nancy Grasmick and U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings set up a task force on youth violence. It met in June and will meet again in October, concentrating on prevention, not punishment.

“There is a renewed focus here,” said Chuck Buckler, director of the state Student Services Alternative Programs, who said he’s heard of students carrying guns for protection on the way to and from school.

At the first summit, he said, the emphasis was on getting the entire community—parents, religious leaders, police—involved.

“They’re dealing with very difficult situations and very difficult populations,” he said of the most troubled schools. “I don’t know that we have one answer. I think one of the main things is that it can’t be schools alone.”

Buckler said violence isn’t limited to Baltimore schools. “Sometimes I don’t think some of the other jurisdictions understand they have these issues going on,” he said.

The state doesn’t track violent incidents, but it does look at suspensions by category. Of 42,422 suspensions statewide in the previous school year for violent acts, 5,350 were in Baltimore and 5,488 were in Baltimore County.

The city has 96 police officers assigned to its schools. Last year, 1,235 students were arrested.

Nzinga Oneferua-El brought Street Soldiers, a violence-prevention program created in San Francisco two decades ago, to Baltimore. Now she runs the Entrepreneur Training University Community School on the Lake Clifton campus in Northeast Baltimore, working not just with students but also with their siblings and parents. The top priority from the start? Safety.

David Higgins, the ninth-grader who’s glad to be at Heritage High, also on the Lake Clifton campus, said he’s seen his share of fights in schools but has learned how to stay out of trouble. He praises Street Soldiers for bringing a culture of respect to hallways and classrooms.

“That’s a good program,” said David, who’s 15. “It teaches you how to eliminate violence from your community and your life.”

Lydia Hall, who runs Street Soldiers at Heritage High, said the program teaches students and school officials to defuse potentially violent situations.

She’s never been afraid while working in the school system since 1979 because, she says, she talks to the students, and they in turn treat her with respect. “We cannot teach our students anything if we don’t know what’s on that student’s mind,” she said.

David’s mother, Tawanda Hughes, said many fights start because one student or group feels disrespected. “We have sit-down talks, we bring all the kids together, and we go to the root of the problem.”

Heritage High has been taken off the watch list of dangerous schools. Besides attending workshops like Street Soldiers, students meet school police officers during the day in programs designed to show that police aren’t the enemy.

Standards of behavior

The city is also starting a school, called Success Academy, to provide services such as psychological evaluation and career counseling for students who have been suspended multiple times or expelled.

Brice said that in the past, students suspended more than once or expelled were just sent home with schoolwork. So, the ones who needed more supervision got less.

“We believe in something different,” Brice said. “We believe it is part of our responsibility, along with parents and the larger community, to teach our young students standards for behavior, and hold them accountable for those behaviors.”

The school, in the North Avenue administration building, has room for 50 students in the morning and 50 in the afternoon for 25 to 45 days, said Brice. It’ll “provide an opportunity for them to have some really intensive work around developing better conflict resolution skills” before they return to their regular schools.

Also, he said, teachers are getting training and support in conflict resolution.

Students who’re suspended time and again are at particular risk for violence because their behavior is typically a sign of deeper troubles. Del. Melvin Stukes, a Baltimore Democrat, has formed a task force to consider the help they need. “I knew I could not sit back anymore,” he said.

Trusting the police

School officials are taking action to change the mind-set of even the youngest students as they grow up in a violence-saturated world. At Alexander Hamilton Elementary, Principal Charlotte Jackson says the Northwest Baltimore school has curtailed crime by inviting city school police for gang prevention programs. The officers talk about the dangers of gangs, and meet with teachers and parents too.

“We expect to have similar sessions this year,” Jackson said, “not because [gang activity] is rampant in this neighborhood, but because it’s an awareness type of thing.” She said the program reaches youngsters while they’re still relatively innocent. “I want the children to see the school police in a positive light,” she said.

Police are not the only ones focused on nipping potential problems early. Teachers at the school are “beyond teachers,” Jackson said. “They are mothers, fathers, psychologists and diagnosticians.” When a student misbehaves, school officials work to identify the cause of the problem, then attack it at its roots. “A lot is common sense,” she said.

A change in attitude

Until recently, JoJuan Edwards, 16, a junior at Heritage High, would get into a fight “if a girl looked at me the wrong way.”

After JoJuan’s father left when she was 13, “Things started to get really rough.” She felt that she had to fight. “I figured that if I could stand my own ground, most girls wouldn’t pick with me and mess with me,” she said.

But Street Soldiers changed that attitude. Now JoJuan is a Street Soldier facilitator, helping others embrace nonviolence.

JoJuan said she helps kids learn “you can’t let things get to you even if they have a broken family home. … You have to do what you have to do to keep the violence out of your life.”

Attending Heritage has improved because students who’ve taken part in Street Soldiers are less inclined to tolerate fighting. “Of course they might joke around here and there,” she said, but students are less likely to “fight over stupid stuff. Nowadays, they don’t do it. It’s a whole lot better.” {EXA}

Karen Nitkin is a freelance writer based in Ellicott City.

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