Teachers Voice Fears on Security After Classroom Stabbing

Faculty members from Olive Vista Junior High, where a teacher was stabbed and two student brawls occurred this week, met with school officials Friday to express concerns about security and lack of support from district administrators.

“We needed to express our feelings; there has been a lot of tension,” said Roberta Bernstein, a counselor at the Sylmar school and the local union representative.

“People needed to know they are going to be supported by the administration . . . that they didn’t leave us here as the last outpost in the San Fernando Valley,” Bernstein said.

Principal Charles C. Welsh; Joseph Luskin, a regional administrator of operations, and Marcia Charney, a field representative for school board President Roberta Weintraub, who represents the East Valley, met with about 110 teachers and staff members during a closed session in the school’s library after classes were dismissed early.

Welsh noted that the school at 14600 Tyler St. will be getting more security but said that throughout the week the district administration had been showing full support for the teachers. Still, he said the meeting went well and will help defuse tensions.

“This is a meeting for teachers to de-tune,” Welsh said. “We’ve had a tense school, a trauma last Monday that is terrible.”

On Monday, English teacher Cynthia Edwards, 37, was stabbed in the back after she called a ninth-grade student to the front of the classroom while she wrote out a disciplinary report on his use of profanity.

Edwards, of Palmdale, is recovering at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. The 15-year-old suspect, who is from Pacoima and has had a history of disciplinary problems, has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a knife on campus. He is being held at the Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

Tension Heightened

Teachers said tension caused by the attack was heightened by apparently unrelated fights between students Thursday and Friday and by stress on teachers related to voting Tuesday on union contract negotiations and progress reports on students that were due Wednesday.

“All these things separately caused tension,” Bernstein said. “All together, they caused a great deal of tension.”

Bernstein said teachers told administrators that the stabbing has made many of them nervous about writing disciplinary reports, known as referrals, on students. Teachers were also upset by what they felt was the limited response of district administrators to the stabbing.

But Welsh disagreed, noting that two assistant superintendents came to the school and the hospital after the stabbing and that Supt. Leonard M. Britton has also visited Edwards at the hospital.

While the 1,600-student campus normally has one police officer on duty, officials said security is being increased. Several school police officers were on campus Friday and a district task force, designed to counsel students, will be assigned to the school temporarily, Welsh said.

The principal said additional administrative help will be assigned to help monitor student activities outside classrooms.