Task Force Hears School Safety Ideas

Relatively simple measures such as requiring see-through backpacks, praising teens more for what they do right or adding patrol cars to neighborhoods before and after school might prevent school violence, a safe-schools task force was told Tuesday.

Those suggestions came from among 50 or so Los Angeles-area community advocates, teachers, parents, students, police officers and campus administrators who spent the morning brainstorming at the Van Nuys State Building. At the first public hearing of the five-member Los Angeles Task Force for Safe Schools, those who testified had no definitive answers.

Instead, the task force simply listened, discussing what works, what doesn’t, and what could help ensure safety in and around schools and prevent a tragedy such as the deadly shootings in Littleton, Colo.

“I’m tired of people passing the buck,” said Jayne Murphy Shapiro, president of Kids Safe, a nationwide nonprofit group based in Los Angeles, which is sponsoring the task force. “We have to come together to try and do something about youth violence.”

In September, the task force plans to compile a report on school safety and submit it to the governor, Legislature and Los Angeles Board of Education, among others.

Citing an incident in which two Lynwood High School girls were shot to death earlier this month while walking to school, Pepperdine University law professor Bill Haney said officials need to be more concerned about student safety before and after school. “There seems to be a gap there,” said Haney, co-chairman of the task force.

Several security and police officers said that if funding allowed, they would increase the number of patrol cars in campus neighborhoods, especially before and after school.

Safety is also lacking for many teachers, Haney said. Some have classrooms in bungalows, near chained fences and far from the main office. “There’s no way for them to escape or sound an alert,” he said.

Because of all the attempts to smuggle drugs or weapons into Lynwood High, the security staff is considering requiring see-through backpacks.

“Students will go to no end to find different ways to do things,” said William Lee, senior security officer at Lynwood. “You have to be on top of things.”

It was only by chance, Lee said, that staff began checking belts routinely after they confiscated a student’s belt and found drugs inside a zipped pouch.

Dan Isaacs, an assistant superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said that if he had a wish list, he’d want more counselors in the elementary schools.

“To me, if we can intervene before they reach middle school or high school, we will have the greatest success,” Isaacs said.

The best way to deter youth violence is to support and praise the young people who are graduating, helping their peers and, in general, succeeding, said Anthony Borbon, associate director of the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles.

Frequent negativity discourages teens, he said. “[Adults] are good at stereotyping. The majority of young people in grades K-12 are learning. Many are doing positive things.”