Safety first

FOUR THUGS ARMED with a loaded automatic pistol drove up to Manual Arts High School two Wednesdays ago after school, hunting for a student. Fortunately, Los Angeles school police officers noticed something fishy and arrested them.

Later that same week, a youth walking home from school was less fortunate. He was beaten and shot at -- but was not hit -- by five gang members at the corner of 23rd and San Pedro streets.

Both incidents, in their mundane potential for tragedy, illustrate the challenges the Los Angeles Unified School District faces in keeping kids safe. Children are at grave risk on their way to school, the moment they leave campus and sometimes on school grounds as well.

Education reformers with grand ideas about enhancing instruction soon learn that for parents and students, curriculum is a distant concern compared to safety. The mad rush of parents to enroll their children in Green Dot charter schools? Overwhelmingly, it’s a desire for safety.

The Urban League learned this recently when it initiated a revitalization project in the Crenshaw High School neighborhood. Police Chief William J. Bratton assigned more cops to the neighborhood; City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo allocated a prosecutor to the school, and the Urban League started a morning walking club, which made more adults visible nearby during key hours. The result? A 24% drop in crime from October through January.

Sometimes improving security is as simple as adding adults to a campus. The race riots that rocked Jordan and Jefferson high schools two years ago have not been repeated, in part because the district hired more aides for those schools.

Adult involvement places a burden on parents, and that’s just fine. Too often, parents engage in their children’s education during elementary school, then fade away as the kids grow older. Parental stamina could make schools safer.

Beyond that, there is the other group of adults on every school campus: teachers.

School supervision disappeared from teachers’ contracts about 15 years ago, and with it, a pool of adults withdrew from the business of keeping troublesome kids in line. That’s not easy -- teachers face enormous challenges, especially in some of the district’s tougher schools -- but the consequence of teacher disengagement is that by middle and high school, the only authority figures on many campuses are a couple of deans or assistant principals.

Kids also need protection going to and from many campuses. It’s there that the city’s Safe Passages program offers spotty help, helping to cover routes to a few dozen schools. If the program works, more children deserve its protection.

There are a thousand solutions to the district’s myriad troubles. But none of them can make a difference if students aren’t safe.