Kids Focus Adults on Violence

“Could we stop the violence on the buses?”

With that question, the skinny, quiet 10-year-old got more than 50 Los Angeles educators, parents, business and religious leaders who gathered Thursday at Reseda High School to hush and listen to students’ concerns about school violence.

Adrian Perez, a fourth-grader at Hart Street School in Canoga Park, continued shyly, saying, “Kids are always bothering my brother on the bus . . . and I wanted to know if we could stop the violence?”

Only a handful of students attended the two-hour Education Council meeting, hosted by Councilwoman Laura Chick. But what they said riveted the group and inspired many participants to call for a countywide conference where prominent adults would listen to children of all ages on how to increase school safety and prevent tragedies such as the killings in Littleton, Colo.

“I always believed that it’s important to listen to kids, but today I learned just how powerful their stories are,” said Chick, who after the meeting said she was interested in convening such a conference.

The Columbine High massacre in Colorado, Chick said, “is something so abhorrent, so awful, I think the reaction of everyone is one big question mark. . . . The only positive that could come out of it is that we learn from it.”

The participants said they learned to listen to the young people.

Many teachers and principals said they had not given much thought to bus safety. Although the boy’s brother rides a city bus, not a school bus, the 10-year-old’s question prompted what everyone agreed was an important discussion.

Guest speaker Billie Weiss, executive director of the Violence Prevention Coalition of Los Angeles, asked school officials whether school bus drivers are trained in identifying and dealing with behavioral problems.

Although Los Angeles bus drivers receive training, the two high school representatives reiterated during and after the meeting that there’s more to consider.

“There’s nothing preventing a student from shooting someone or stabbing someone on the bus,” said Eric Ceja, 18, student body president at Reseda High. “And people get beat up on the bus all the time. Nobody gets searched. The driver can’t stop a bus on the freeway to deal with violence.

“What’s stopping someone from bringing a gun on the bus, and then throwing it in some bush? If we want to prevent something like Columbine, we have to think about these things.”

Senior Ivon Gamboa, 17, said she’s taken a school bus for seven years.

“People fight in there, people get bullied, I got bullied,” said Ivon, president of Reseda’s Weapons Are Removed Now, a program that encourages students to inform authorities of youngsters who carry weapons. “But students act differently when there are cameras on the buses.”

When the adults debated whether school uniforms helped to decrease gang activity, Ceja’s comments commanded the most attention.

“It’s hard for a student to wear the same thing over and over,” he said.

He encouraged the group to consider Reseda’s “Dress for Success” program, in which teachers give students incentives, such as extra credit, when they dress up.

“Like we’re going on a job interview,” Ceja said.

Chick nodded approvingly.

“Yes,” she said, “what a wonderful idea.”