Debating How Best to Make Our Schools Safe

While watching a state Senate committee on school violence Monday, I thought about how we expect the schools to cure all of society’s ills.

This is not an original idea, but it seemed relevant during the discussion of school safety at Cal State Northridge.

The committee was drawn to the Valley by the shooting death of Michael Ensley, 17, at Reseda High School on Feb. 17. With the Legislature in adjournment, committees such as this are meeting around the state to pick up information on state problems. Sometimes, it becomes useful legislation. But mostly the testimony goes no further than dusty Capitol shelves, where tapes of the meetings are stored.

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown proposed special disciplinary academies for students caught carrying guns to schools. Others called for the schools to teach children how to settle their inevitable disputes in a nonviolent fashion--although advocates of such programs conceded that teachers are overwhelmed with traditional tasks of teaching kids how to read and write.

I sympathize with the teachers. They are already teaching students about the dangers of sex and drugs, in addition to how to drive and get along in a multicultural society. These are all worthy, but you wonder just how much the schools can do.

A much more direct solution to school violence was suggested in a presentation by four young women from Reseda High School: tougher gun control laws.

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The students didn’t actually advocate such a politically controversial step. But as I watched them, I thought increased gun control was the logical conclusion to what they had to say.

The students--Danielle Schneider, Jayne Rebbeck, Debbie Carlos and Iman Dakhil--are part of a group called WARN--Weapons Are Removed Now. It was formed at Reseda following Michael Ensley’s murder.

The young women performed a skit about what happened when a girl brought a gun to school. The girl, Tess, was being harassed by other students. She borrowed a pistol from a boy. A friend told her the gun was dangerous but didn’t disclose that Tess secretly had the gun. That night, Tess accidentally shot herself to death.

The theme of the playlet was “Break the Code of Silence”: Forget the iron-clad rule of growing up that you don’t turn in a friend. It is this code, the Reseda students contended, that stops teen-agers from reporting kids they know are packing guns. At Reseda, six students said they knew that Ensley’s killer was armed, but they said nothing.

The girls, who perform the skit in elementary and middle schools, hope their audiences will carry the lesson into high school.

Beyond such theatrical efforts, Reseda High engages in more conventional approaches, such as spot-checking students with metal detectors. “An admirable goal,” said Reseda Principal Robert Kladifko. But he is skeptical about its effectiveness, noting that small guns could be passed from outside campus through a chain-link fence. The gun used to kill Michael Ensley was that small.

Why not make it even harder to bring a gun on campus? Why not try to prevent firearms from ending up in the hands of youngsters such as 15-year-old Robert Heard, who shot Ensley.

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It has been less than five years since California last toughened its gun laws, and statistics show the effort has been effective.

One of the laws imposed a 15-day waiting period before completion of a gun purchase. The prospective purchaser is checked out. If a criminal record turns up, the sale is canceled.

Last year, 5,763 sales were killed by the state. In other words, almost 6,000 convicted criminals were denied permission to buy a gun. Among them were 674 narcotics offenders, 317 burglars, 127 armed robbers, 102 sex offenders and 37 killers. More than 100 others were mentally ill. The rest had been convicted of lesser crimes.

That’s a lot of dangerous people who were denied firearms, or who had to go scrambling around the illegal market for one. And we’re not even counting the crime-free impulse buyers who stormed into gun stores after domestic disputes and were saved from violence by the 15-day waiting period.

The Legislature, wary of another politically dangerous confrontation with the National Rifle Assn., has been reluctant to assemble a major new package of gun control bills. But out in the grass roots, more gun control groups are forming. In Los Angeles, for example, a coalition of women’s organizations is pressing for stronger laws.

Even the most fervent gun control advocates concede that new laws alone will not stop violence in the public schools. But at least they will remove some of the burden from the teachers and students who now bear such a heavy responsibility for keeping their schools safe.