Teachers Protest Transfer of Expelled Student

In the wake of a series of horrific schoolyard shootings across the nation, teachers at Northridge Middle School on Wednesday expressed outrage that a student was temporarily transferred there after being caught with an unloaded BB gun at another Valley school.

Math teacher Ronn Yablun, who had the 13-year-old seventh-grader in one of his classes, said the Los Angeles Unified School District’s actions threatened the safety of the staff and the 1,100 other students at the middle school.

“To be looking down the barrel of an unloaded BB gun or looking down the barrel of a loaded .45, frankly I wouldn’t know the difference,” said Yablun, the school’s teacher union representative. “When a child brings a gun to school and is just moved to another campus, the message given to other kids is that it’s OK.”

Yablun and about 20 other teachers from the middle school picketed outside the district’s regional facility at 6621 Balboa Blvd. in Van Nuys, demanding the district bar any student caught with gun from being even temporarily placed at a regular school.

Julie Korenstein, president of the Los Angeles Board of Education, joined the protesting teachers Wednesday and vowed to push for a change in the district’s disciplinary policy when the panel meets in July.

“I never will allow this to happen again,” Korenstein told reporters. “A kid that brings a gun to school has no business being in a regular school.”

The bloody shootings at schools in Springfield, Ore.; West Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark., and Pearl, Miss., during the past year have punctuated the need for a strict policy, she said.

Under the district’s “zero tolerance” policy, principals must immediately suspend students found in possession of a firearm at a school--even a BB gun or a replica--and recommend the student’s expulsion to the Board of Education.

However, the student is sent to another district facility while the Expulsion Review Committee studies the case, and until the Board of Education decides how to respond. The law requires the board to decide within 40 school days of the principal’s report.

Korenstein said that in most cases, the students are sent to alternative district schools, such as continuation programs, where the staff is better equipped to handle troubled youths.

On rare occasions, the students are transferred to another regular school while the case is pending, usually when there is not space available in an alternative facility, Korenstein said. This is the practice Korenstein wants to eliminate, and what the Northridge teachers were protesting. To change to policy, the district needs to increase funding for alternative schools, she said.

If a student is expelled from his home campus, but not arrested or charged with an offense, state law still requires all districts to find a place in another district facility, she said.

School officials said the 13-year-old brought the BB gun to Portola Middle School in Tarzana earlier this month. He told them he stuffed the gun in a backpack because other students were threatening him. The gun was not loaded, said Deborah Leidner, regional administrator for the district.

After the incident, the student was transferred to Northridge Middle School, which he attended until Wednesday morning. Leidner said the boy was moved to an alternative school program Wednesday, in part because of the teachers’ protest.

Northridge Middle School Principal Bob Kinsella said he was dismayed by the protest, because he assured teachers the youngster would be suspended if he posed even the slightest problem.

“I’m kind of shocked by the overreaction. I honestly don’t know what they are trying to accomplish,” Kinsella said. “The incident was serious, but this was the kind of thing where we could have taken a kid who did a dumb thing and perhaps turn it into something positive for him.”

The student’s case is pending before the Board of Education.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District in the 1996-97 school year, 51 students were expelled for taking guns to school. That’s down from 1993-94, the closest year with reliable figures, when 80 students were expelled.

The number of students caught with a gun, but not expelled, was not available Wednesday, said district spokesman Shel Erlich.

The district also could not say how many times students who are caught with guns are placed in regular schools. Korenstein said a “handful” are, but could not provide precise numbers.