School safety committee issues weapons report - Berkeleyside article 6/24/11 by Frances Dinkelspiel

[Heather Wood]

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2011/06/24/berkeley-school-safety-committee-issues-weapons-report/

** This article is important because it's important for us to stay
abreast of how the District is running their schools. I suspect BAS is
going to be changing it's focus in the future and we need to keep on
top of hot-button issues regarding the District's management. The
comments are worth reading as well. As usual; one person accuses us of
thuggery. Interesting choice of words there. I've been called worse,
though.**

Three months after two students accidentally discharged a gun in a
Berkeley High School bathroom, a task force empaneled to study the
issue of weapons has concluded that the school should not install
metal detectors or close the campus during lunch, but should require
students to carry – but not necessarily display — identification
cards.

In addition, the school could improve safety by more closely
controlling who comes in and out of the campus. To do that, the high
school should reduce the number of entrances to campus to four and
hire monitors to stand by the gates. The school should more strictly
enforce its visitors’ policy to make sure everyone on campus has a
legitimate reason to be there, according to the report.

The school should also retain the 12 safety officers currently on
staff – up from 10 in previous years — and hire a second full-time
police officer for the campus, if financially feasible. All security
personnel should be required to wear uniforms that plainly identify
them to students, staff and the police, concludes the report, which
will be presented to the school board on June 29.

The eleven-page set of recommendations is the culmination of three
months of work by the Ad Hoc Safety Committee, which was appointed by
Superintendent Bill Huyett in April to review policies and procedures
in the city’s high schools after a spate of six gun incidents in a two-
and-a-half month period from January to March 2011. The large number
of weapons found on campus deeply distressed the community and the
school board and led to emotional community meetings, student focus
groups, police training, a flurry of online comment, and a sense of
urgency that the district had to quickly address a growing problem.

Right after the sixth gun incident on March 25th, the school district
took a number of immediate steps to try and improve the situation and
asked the 15-member task force to examine some long-term policy
questions on how to eliminate – or at least minimize – the presence of
weapons at school.

The district bumped up its security detail by hiring two more school
safety officers and increasing the presence of a uniformed police
officer on campus from four to five days a week. Berkeley High closed
some entrances to the massive campus, positioned security guards at
the gates in the morning and after lunch, and stepped up patrols in
out of way portions of the campus. It installed an anonymous hotline
to report weapons. There have been no other guns discovered on the
Berkeley High or B-Tech campuses since the security upgrades.

The report, and discussion among committee members, provide some new
details on the six gun incidents, which included six Berkeley students
and one non-Berkeley student.

All of the on-campus incidents happened in the morning while the off-
campus incident happened after school was dismissed.
A total of seven Berkeley students and one non-Berkeley students were
involved in the six gun incidents.
Six of the seven students were not on probation prior to the incident
One student was a senior, three were juniors, one was a sophomore, and
one was a freshman.
Three students had not had prior discipline incidents this year before
they brought weapons to school.
All the students were male.
One student was homeless.
All resided in Berkeley
All have been expelled from the district

The district also asked an independent evaluator, Albert Bahn, the
owner of Edu-Safe Associates, to walk through the Berkeley High and B-
Tech campuses and do a safety assessment and examine the schools’
emergency plans. He found few safety deficiencies and declared “the
current security measures in place at Berkeley High School are better
than those at most public high schools.”

The school board will have the final say on whether to implement the
task force’s recommendations. It allocated $89,000 at the end of the
term to beef up security. The actions recommended in the report would
cost an estimated $180,000. Most of that is staff costs.

Here is an excerpt from the report with the major recommendations:

Police Presence at Schools: BUSD currently has one BPD School Resource
Officer who works from Tuesdays through Fridays at BHS and has
recently added a second .25FTE School Resource Officer to work at BHS
on Mondays. BPD has recommended that a second full-time School
Resource Officer be added to provide coverage at the three middle
schools. The cost of adding a full-time School Resource Officer is
approximately $150,000 – $180,000 per year. The Ad Hoc Safety
Committee is in favor of adding a second School Resource Officer if
available funding can be found.

District Security Staffing: The Ad Hoc Safety Committee recommends
that the District continue to provide the increased Safety Officer
staffing at B.H.S. that was implemented during the second semester of
the 2010-2011 school year of 12 Safety Officers. The District will
provide a second Safety Officer at B-Tech upon request by the B-Tech
Principal. In addition, the committee recommends that four Campus
Monitors be hired to supervise the three entrances on Milvia Street
and the gate between the administration building and the Little
Theater.

Uniforms for Safety Officers and Campus Monitors: The Ad Hoc Safety
committee unanimously agreed that Safety Officers and Campus Monitors
have a visible uniform which includes slacks and a jacket or top that
has visible lettering on the front and back. The lettering does not
need to state “SECURITY”; it can state, for example, “BUSD STAFF”. The
uniform should be professional in appearance, have an approachable
look, and allow a Safety Officer or Campus Monitor to be identified
from the back at a distance. The uniform must be a requirement for
duty and compliance must be monitored by site administration.

Gun/Violence Prevention Education: Gun/violence prevention education
will be offered at BHS and B-Tech so that students are educated
regarding the dangers of guns and will know what to do if they see
one. Gun/violence prevention education will teach students that
handling of any gun on campus is unsafe and illegal. Each small
learning community leadership team at BHS will build one to two
lessons of gun/violence prevention education into the curriculum.
Guest presenters will provide testimonials regarding the dangers of
guns. Gun safety education must also be provided to parents. In
addition, a Gun Free Zone must be created around schools. BUSD will
work with the City Council regarding this initiative.

Procedures for Visitors to Campus: The District has an existing
visitor policy; however, it is difficult to enforce with the design of
the administration building at BHS. The District must provide visible
signage regarding the visitor policy at all schools, a barrier to
direct visitors in the BHS administration building, and separate
entrances for students and adults at BHS. BHS administration will
arrange for students to enter through the gate next to the
administration building and adults to enter through the administration
building. Every visitor will be required to wear a visitor badge when
on campus.

Programs to Strengthen Positive School Culture: The Ad Hoc Safety
Committee recognizes that bullying, truancy, and related issues with
student behavior may contribute to an environment that is conducive to
firearms and other weapons and violence at schools. The committee
agrees that the District should implement a program to strengthen
positive school culture at the high schools. The committee recommends
both a Tier I school-wide program to strengthen a positive school
culture and a Tier II program targeted towards students who are having
significant behavior issues. The District has already made a
commitment to participate in a multi-agency Tier II initiative called
Lifelines to Healing. A Tier I program has not been selected yet; the
committee agrees that several programs should be considered prior to
making a decision. The District has already implemented a process for
providing transitional support for high risk students as a Tier II
intervention through the use of a counselor at B-Tech and a teacher on
special assignment at Berkeley High School. The District is examining
further collaboration with outside agencies, including Berkeley Mental
Health, to expand mental health services and other support for high
risk students.


Closed Campus: Current policy is that the BHS campus is closed between
classes (periods one, two and three, and periods four, five, and six)
and is open only at lunch time. The current policy is not monitored
adequately and must be strictly and consistently enforced. BHS has a
student population of over 3,000 students and has the capacity to feed
500 students during the lunch period. Presently, due to limited
available facilities for feeding students on campus, it is not
feasible to close the campus at lunch time. However, the District will
explore the costs of facilities, personnel and other resources for
closing the campus in the future.

Perimeter Security: BHS will reduce the number of entrances for
students to four. The four entrances will be 1) between the
administration building and the Little Theater, 2) at Milvia and
Kittredge, 3) at Milvia and Bancroft, and 4) at Milvia and Durant.
Each entrance will be permanently staffed with a BUSD Campus Monitor.
In addition, Safety Officers and the BPD School Resource Officer will
jointly patrol the perimeter of BHS and the neighborhood that is in
close proximity to the school.

Screening for Weapons: There has been some interest from parents and
community members regarding metal detectors. However, District
administration, the external consultant, and BPD do not think metal
detectors are an effective option, and the committee does not support
this option. It is not feasible to process over 3,000 students through
metal detectors within a limited period of time. The District will
provide ongoing training for Safety Officers and administrators
regarding search and seizure procedures, protocols, and standards for
what constitutes reasonable suspicion.


Identification Badges for Students: The Ad Hoc Safety Committee is in
support of requiring identification badges for students, per school
policy. The committee is split, however, regarding whether or not to
require the identification badges to be visible at all times. The
Superintendent recommends for the coming school year that the District
require identification badges and examine the possible benefits of
requiring the identification badges to be visible in the future. The
committee recommends that identification badges be checked for any
student entering or leaving campus early or late but not at lunch
break. Periodic identification badge checks will be conducted,
possibly during advisory. In addition, identification badges will be
required for attendance at extra-curricular activities including
athletic events, dances, and proms. The option of requiring
identification badges for middle school students in order to prepare
them for high school should be explored.

Increased Collaboration Between the Berkeley Unified School District
and the Berkeley Police Department: The District will meet
collaboratively with representatives from the Berkeley Police
Department on a regular basis and maintain ongoing communication. The
BUSD Superintendent, BPD Chief of Police, BPD Sergeant of Youth
Services, and BUSD Director of Student Services plan to meet on a
quarterly basis. In addition, representatives from BPD and Probation
will be invited to attend monthly Secondary Council meetings with the
middle and high school Principals.