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U. City schools, city council team up for gang prevention
(by Jenny Fisher - November 25, 2009)
Parents, teachers and community members are concerned about an increase in fights at and around University City High School, as well as gang activity in the community.
This fall, police have responded to a number of brawls that erupted when kids from different parts of the city confronted one another while walking home, as well as some burglaries committed by juveniles. Though police Chief Charles Adams said the confrontations were generally just two or three individuals fighting, the scenes drew large, noisy crowds. And fights have also taken place on school property, generating several suspensions already this year.
“At the start of the school year, there were a number of altercations between students,” superintendent Joylynn Wilson wrote in an e-mail. “While any altercation is unacceptable, we did seem to be having more altercations than previous years.”
By the end of the first quarter, seven students were suspended for fighting at the high school, Wilson said. Principal Tim Wernentin said fights happen about once every two weeks, on average.
The school district has responded by implementing an anonymous tip line, 290-4444, which is checked hourly by the principal and safety officers, Wilson said. Buzzer entry systems, which had already been installed at other schools in the district, were recently set up at the high school. Now visitors must press a button to be let in before entering the building and showing their IDs.
Wernentin said the school will also hire additional support personnel to walk the hallways, will institute a peer mediation program and has implemented a gang-prevention program called “Real Talk,” which pairs at-risk students with community members.
“We are trying to be more proactive and less reactive, so we don’t have some major incident down the road,” Wilson said.
To engage the community and the city in the issue, the school district held a gang prevention meeting earlier this month, with representatives from the school district and the city council. About 30 people attended, Wilson said, including parents and other community members. As a result of the meeting, she said, several parents volunteered to come to the building during the school day to act as an extra set of eyes and ears in the hallways.
The meeting was part of a series designed to strengthen the relationship between the school district and the city, said council member Byron Price. He said that joint committees would be organized to create after-school programs and counseling programs to help keep kids occupied.
“There’s probably a small group of individuals who can affect a larger group of people,” Price said. “So what we want to do is to provide opportunities for a broader scope of youth so they won’t be drawn in by that small group that has a lot of influence.”
Price has requested that the city council approve $100,000 in city funding to develop after-school activities for kids. He said citizens he spoke to were concerned, reporting that they tended to see young people hanging out in the street rather than engaged in positive activities. “And it’s true,” he said, “We really don’t have any organized activities for youth once they leave school.”
“I think this is probably one of the most important things in a long time, that the city and the school district working together can do for young people in U. City,” he added.
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