Teacher Group Seeks to Fight School Violence : Education: NEA says $500 million is needed over five years for better security, tackling problems before they develop.

The National Education Assn., responding to increased violence in the nation’s schools, proposed a $500-million initiative Thursday to retrain teachers, increase security and develop programs to detect and deal with problems before they occur.

At a news conference Thursday, the teachers’ group said violence has grown to critical proportions, reaching beyond urban public schools to suburban and rural campuses and into private institutions.

“Regardless of race, family income, region of the country--no child in America today is immune to the fear or insulated from the possibility of random, indiscriminate and senseless violence,” NEA President Keith Geiger said. On a typical day, Geiger said, 100,000 students bring guns to school and 40 children are killed or wounded by gunshots.

To address the situation, the NEA is proposing that Congress approve legislation providing money for local school districts to use in various ways, including training students and staff in crime prevention, employing school security personnel and buying metal detectors.

The measure, which would authorize spending $100 million annually over five years, also would enable schools to develop programs to teach students about ethnic diversity and nonviolent methods of resolving disputes.

As evidence of how desperately action is needed, NEA officials said, so many children are dying in the small city of East Palo Alto, Calif., that a local school superintendent, Charlie Mae Knight, suggested recently that schools purchase life insurance for students to help pay burial costs.

Educators called for new approaches in middle and high schools to address the problems of youngsters who skip classes, are bored by school or are themselves parents. The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, suggested that the problems could be addressed by such alternative methods as placing “extremely disruptive” students in their own educational programs and sharply reducing classroom student-teacher ratios.

“Alternative education is going to be much different than anyone thinks,” Geiger said. “It’s going to be one-on-one. It will be very, very expensive, but (crime) is more expensive.” In urging the $100-million annual expenditure, the NEA said that an estimated $200 million is spent annually battling school crime and vandalism. NEA officials said they have not found a sponsor for the proposed legislation.

Parent and community involvement is crucial to the success of the proposed school violence legislation, Geiger declared. “Parents have to be an integral part of the solution to the problem,” he said.

In Los Angeles, a program similar to those in the NEA legislation already is being used in some schools. “Straight Talk About Risks,” an educational package created by the Center to vent Handgun Violence, which is based here, debuted this fall in 20 Los Angeles schools.