Officials Plot Strategy for Safer Schools in Moorpark : Education: Teachers, increasingly concerned about campus violence, plan to ask that their working environment be formally declared dangerous.

In the wake of several violent encounters on campus and reports of students with weapons, Moorpark school officials are plotting a strategy to make schools safer.

Even though surveys show that students feel safe in school, teachers have become increasingly vocal about the dangers they face in the classroom.

The local teachers union, now in contract negotiations with the Moorpark Unified School District, plans to ask county and state officials this week to declare Moorpark schools unsafe working environments because of the incidents, union President Richard Gillis said.

Gillis went through a list of episodes, including one last week when a middle school student tried to break a teacher’s fingers. In another incident, Gillis said, a teacher’s aide was injured when a student tried to choke her. And a teacher had to go on disability leave after she was attacked, he said.

If the campuses are declared unsafe by the state superintendent of schools office or by the county superintendent of schools, Gillis said, any teacher injured by violence would qualify for double workers’ compensation benefits.

“We’ve had these incidents of violence without a remedy,” he said. “We want this treated like other safety hazards.”

District administrators and school board members will meet Tuesday to begin developing a plan for dealing with school violence, a plan that could involve committees of teachers and administrators at every school.

Still, they point to a recent survey jointly conducted by the county superintendent’s office and UC Santa Barbara showing that district schools are safe.

Officials will review the findings from the extensive safety survey, in which students said they were worried more about grades than school violence, with about 80% of them saying they felt safe on campus.

Even so, some of the information from the survey of students, teachers and parents worries board members.

The survey showed that in recent months, 5% of Moorpark students had been threatened with a gun at school, while 6% had been threatened with knives, and nearly 3% of teachers surveyed said they had often seen weapons on campus.

“Some of the results were surprising for me,” board member Clint Harper said.

He believes that the teachers union is exploiting the recent reports of violence on campus as part of a bitter salary dispute that has dragged on for years. Still, he said the survey begs the question about why the board has not heard about these incidents.

“We have had indications from some faculty members that they had seen weapons on campus, but those reports don’t correspond to these numbers,” Harper said. The results, he said, seem to indicate that teachers and students “are seeing weapons at a higher rate than we see reported to us.”

The teachers union has hammered the board and administrators for not taking more aggressive action to deal with violence. The union first publicized the series of violent encounters at schools after the board voted last month not to expel a middle school student caught with a knife on campus.

Gillis said teachers have made an effort to keep reports of violence from students, which may be why students reported feeling safe at school.

“In retrospect, maybe that was not a good idea,” he said. “There have always been problems, but this year it’s really coming to a head, and the board is not dealing with them in a direct and forceful manner.”

More than 200 teachers, parents and staff members signed a petition asking for “no tolerance” of weapons on campus. The petition calls for automatic expulsion if a student is caught with a weapon or drugs.

As it now stands, students caught with weapons automatically face a closed-door expulsion hearing with the school board, but board members are not obligated to expel a student if they believe that expulsion is inappropriate.

“Does that mean that you expel every kid that brings a pocketknife to school?” Harper asked. “I am against kids bringing knives or weapons to school, but I believe that each case deserves reasonable judgment by the board.”

Despite the teachers union’s assessment of the situation, the survey generally indicates that Moorpark’s schools are safe, said Richard Morrison, who conducted the study for the county superintendent of schools. And the district administration, he said, was doing a good job of addressing safety issues.

“Their performance is really laudable,” he said.

Morrison, who will be at Tuesday’s meeting, said he will help interpret the data and go over ways to make school grounds even safer. He said that although much has been made of violence on campuses across the country, his studies have found schools much safer now than they were 10 years ago. Still, he said it is unacceptable for even one student to feel unsafe at school.

“Despite what has been made of the issue, only a very small fraction of the students feel unsafe on campus,” he said. “But guess what? Those are the kids that we find are failing. Improving their environment improves learning.”