School Safety Efforts Are Questioned : Education: Despite administrators’ steps to reduce campus violence in Simi Valley, some worry that the district is not acting boldly enough.

In the year since her 14-year-old son was fatally stabbed at school, Jackie Hubbard had hoped administrators would take dramatic steps to quell campus violence and ensure the safety of Simi Valley schoolchildren.

But the spirited movement to improve school safety has lost momentum in the months that followed the first student slaying in Simi Valley schools. And now Hubbard wonders if the death of her son Chad has been in vain.

“Frankly, I don’t think they are doing anything,” Jackie Hubbard said. “I really think if what happened a year ago happened today, it would be the same result.”

Hubbard is not the only one questioning the balky progress by school officials to make sure that such violence does not surface again in Simi Valley schools.

Plans approved five months ago for a program to resolve student conflicts without violence are just getting started at Valley View Junior High School, the same campus where Chad was slain by a fellow student while waiting for a bus.

And a survey of students taken last spring to assess safety on all city schools has finally produced results. Only 10 days ago, a 28-page report detailing the survey’s findings was given to a special school-safety task force.

In the meantime, two more junior high school students have been the victims of knife attacks from classmates in the past year.

“I really don’t see all the follow-through that needs to happen,” said Ron Myren, president of the Simi Educators Assn. “When you go to a school board meeting, no one is talking about school safety. . . . Somehow it has been pushed to the back burner.”

But school officials defend their efforts.

“It is a priority,” Trustee Norm Walker said assertively. “We tackle these things one at a time.”

The first step Simi Valley Unified took last year in the wake of Chad’s death was to create a safety task force composed of teachers, students, parents and community leaders. The committee’s task is to devise plans to make schools safer.

The district also surveyed more than 5,000 students in grades 5-12 to gather information about their experiences related to school safety. The results revealed an alarming number of weapons on Simi Valley school campuses.

About 9% of the students surveyed have seen a gun on campus in the last month, and 29% said they had seen a knife on school grounds. About 5% of the students polled last spring said they have been threatened with a gun, and 5% of teachers said they had as well.

The task force is now reviewing the findings and will make recommendations to the school board next month, officials said.

But while officials were compiling the results of the survey, at least two other violent incidents occurred at Simi Valley schools that upset some parents.

In July, a 14-year-old girl slashed a classmate with a knife after school at Hillside Junior High, police and school officials said.

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And in November, four Valley View students assaulted a 14-year-old student after school, cutting the boy on the back with a retractable razor knife, police said.

Valley View Principal Don Gaudioso said the November incident was blown out of proportion. “They were horsing around,” he said, adding that the boy’s assailant “never broke the skin, he never drew blood.”

“I think because it involved a weapon on campus the police felt they needed to make a full report,” the principal said.

The incident is an example of the tremendous scrutiny Valley View has been under since Chad’s stabbing last year, while little attention has been given to the policies the school has adopted to combat campus crime, Gaudioso said.

“It is a really good school,” he said. “It just seems like you can’t get out from under that cloud.”

Initially, Valley View officials created a strict new dress code that prohibits students from wearing baggy clothing or shirts adorned with pictures or writing. The policy is designed to deter gang activity and promote a professional learning environment, officials said.

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Then, Valley View launched the district’s first conflict-resolution program, which aims to teach students how to resolve their differences without violence. So far, 10 teachers have received training in conflict-resolution techniques, the principal said.

But Valley View’s attempts to curb campus crime have not been embraced by everyone. About 50 parents and students stormed a school board meeting in October to debate the new dress code. And five months into the school year, most Valley View students are still grumbling about the restrictions.

“I think it’s kind of stupid,” said 12-year-old Kristy Taylor. The seventh-grader wore a white T-shirt adorned with a drawing of a piece of toast but did not get in trouble for violating the code.

“Oh, I’m in a gang,” she quipped. “I have a piece of toast on my shirt.”

One of Kristy’s schoolmates, ninth-grader John Spindler, challenged the policy last fall by wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with an American flag.

When administrators refused to let him attend classes because he was violating the dress code, Spindler and his parents turned to the American Civil Liberties Union.

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The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit against the school district in late September, alleging that the school denied John’s constitutional right to freedom of expression. Lawyers said the case should go to trial in the next few months.

Despite the controversy, school officials say the dress code is working. There are fewer fights, and the school climate is more positive and professional, Gaudioso said.

But Jackie Hubbard said she continues to get phone calls from parents who fear the measures lack substance and are not addressing the true problems: gangs and intimidation.

“I don’t think they see it,” she said of school administrators. “What Chad was wearing was not what killed him. To me, that’s the craziest place to start.”

Chad was stabbed in the heart during a scuffle that grew out of a running feud with schoolmate Phillip Hernandez. Convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Hernandez was sentenced to four years at a California Youth Authority prison.

But many parents support the dress code and approve of the measures Gaudioso and district officials have taken.

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“I think they are trying their very best,” parent Karla Penalba said. “They are giving it top priority.”

Valley View parent Teresa Hendricks is not impressed, however. Next month she plans to pack her belongings and take her 12-year-old daughter to a small Midwestern town where she hopes to find safer schools, she said.

“When this school year started, it was already reported that kids were slicing and cutting each other with Exacto knifes,” she said of the November assault at Valley View. “It worries me to have my daughter and my nephew in these schools.”

Although he is confident his programs are easing tensions on campus and improving the school’s climate, Gaudioso makes no assurances.

“I don’t think anyone is going to guarantee that it won’t happen again,” he said of Chad’s slaying. “You can take all the steps and all the precautions you want, but crime happens everywhere.”

Simi Valley Unified is not alone in its attempts to combat campus violence--or in its history of violent incidents.

The National School Safety Center, which is based in Thousand Oaks, has been tracking the number of school slayings reported nationwide. And judging by the rising statistics, serious acts of campus violence are on the increase.

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“This last year we were able to identify 46 cases where students were killed on campuses,” said Ronald Stephens, director of the school safety center. “That’s a dramatic upturn.”

The number of killings rose about 33% from the previous year, when 34 students were either shot or stabbed to death on school grounds, he said.

Although knives seem to be the weapon of choice among students, about 75% of the deaths resulted from shootings, Stephens said.

One of the 46 students killed was Chad Hubbard. And while Simi Valley officials have labeled his death an “isolated incident,” Stephens said the slaying illustrates the growing trend of serious acts of crime on school grounds--even in a county where relatively few student slayings have occurred.

“In my view, Ventura County is facing many of the same issues that are occurring around the country,” Stephens said. “Typically, we have not had major crime problems. But we are seeing more.”

In response to the growing trend, school districts nationwide are taking measures to curb campus violence, he said. Student expulsions are soaring, and school uniforms are on the rise, as is the use of metal detectors on school grounds, he said.

Many Ventura County school districts have taken similar precautions. Conejo Valley Unified created a toll-free phone number for students to call with information about brewing fights on campus last year.

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Five high schools in Oxnard and Camarillo now use metal detectors to conduct random weapon searches. And the Ojai Unified School District cracked down on weapons last year, expelling seven students for weapon possessions.

But for many students at Valley View, the most powerful deterrent to campus crime is the memory of Chad’s fatal stabbing.

On Wednesday, the anniversary of the boy’s death, about 50 students visited his grave site. A poster with his picture was displayed on campus.

“It said, ‘We love you Chad and we miss you,’ ” 13-year-old Jasmine Patterson said. “I guess it is still on everyone’s mind.”

For the Hubbard family, the memory of Chad’s death is constant and painful. On Monday, the family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the school district, in part to teach the district that it must protect its students, Jackie Hubbard said.

Reading messages scrawled on her son’s bedroom wall by his friends after the stabbing, Hubbard selected one written by Chad’s buddy, Geoff Reihl, that seemed fitting to her a year later.

“They say you are not dead if you are not forgotten,” she read aloud. “You will not die in our hearts.”