Saturday, May 08, 1999
Educators comforted by tip line
Phone calls help extinguish problems before they start
BY MIRIAM SMITH
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Educators are wary of that one phone call — the one that says a student may be coming to school carrying a gun and a grudge.
But they'd rather be warned of potential violence than fall victim to it.
That's why officials in several Tristate school districts say they're glad they signed on with the Safe School Helpline, an anonymous safety hot line operated by Security Voice Inc. of Columbus.
SIGNED UP
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Twenty-seven Tristate school districts have signed up with the Safe School Helpline, operated by Security Voice Inc. of Columbus. They include:
• All Warren and Butler county public schools, and the private Badin High School in Hamilton.
• Clermont Northeastern, Goshen, Milford and New Richmond in Clermont County.
• Mount Healthy, Loveland, Northwest, Norwood and Princeton in Hamilton County.
• Sunman-Dearborn Community Schools in Sunman, Ind.
The hot line — (800) 418-6423, ext. 359 — is available to parents and students to report wrongdoing or illegal activity. Callers are kept anonymous and the information is transcribed and sent by fax. Callers are assigned a code number and are asked to call back in three days while the matter is investigated.
For information about the service, call (800) 325-4381.
If the call sounds serious — such as a student threatening to bring a weapon — the school administration is immediately notified, and schools can call police.
Cincinnati Public Schools has its own in-house “safe line,” an anonymous line to report security concerns. The number is 369-3333. The district stresses that people call 911 in an emergency. |
None of 27 local districts using the service this school year reported having a high volume of calls as of last week. The Edgewood schools, for example, had no calls and Princeton had one, while as many as 24 were reported to Northwest Local and 30 to Milford High School. Yet educators stress it's not the number of tips that matters. It's the nature of them — especially after the April 20 school massacre in Littleton, Colo.
“I believe in every single case (of national school violence), there was a student who knew” what would happen, said Tom Baratko, principal of Carlisle High School in northern Warren County.
Tristate educators said none of the calls this year have tipped them off to plans of large-scale violence like that in Littleton. Instead, tips have ranged from concerns about smoking on school property to fears of weapons being brought to school, to rumors of students threatening to hurt teachers.
Some tips have led to discipline or even lockdowns. All Carlisle school buildings were locked down April 22 after a call was placed on the help line reporting a rumor of one or more students going to the middle school to assault teachers.
Educators say they're comforted because this is a tool students can use without fear of their call getting back to their peers, as well as a way parents can anonymously report what they're hearing from their children.
“Most of the calls are students saying they've heard from a friend about what another person is thinking about doing. That's exactly what we want the Safe School Helpline for,” said Barbara Rider, assistant superintendent for the Norwood City Schools, which activated the service last year. “They (tips) never came to be. We were able to investigate each one and cooperate with police and investigate. ... It scared somebody, and that's OK. It should be a place where they can go without fear of some type of incrimination.”
Diane Ingram of Morrow agrees because she believes most teens are reluctant to tattle.
“If the child's going to talk to anybody, it'll probably be the parent,” said Mrs. Ingram, whose son, Trent, is a senior at Little Miami High School in Warren County. But Trent said he probably would talk to a teacher if he thought something violent were going to occur in his school.
Interest in the company's service has skyrocketed since the spate of national school shootings.
Pat Sullivan, president of Security Voice Inc., said the company had about 20 districts signed on when they started the business 21/2 years ago.
Now they're pushing 1,000 nationwide.
The service costs $1.80 per student each year for sixth- or seventh- to 12th-graders, depending on how the districts configure their schools. But this doesn't mean elementary school children or their parents can't call.
“The Cincinnati area has probably been the most receptive area in the state of Ohio,” he said. “Some schools only get three or four calls a year, but they consider it a deterrent. You pay the premium for fire insurance, but the fire truck doesn't show up every year. It's an insurance policy.”
Even so, having a school safety line doesn't always guarantee safety. Jefferson County Schools, the district that includes Columbine High School, had a 24-hour security line in place for years before the shooting spree, said Marilyn Saltzman, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Schools.
Still, interest in tip lines has been high across the nation since the series of school shootings, said June Arnette, associate director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake, Calif.
“It's difficult to measure whether or not you prevented something because something didn't happen,” Ms. Arnette said. “Those districts that have put tip lines in place indicate they've been useful in getting information about weapons and drugs on campuses.”
All eight Warren County public districts and all nine Butler County districts and one private school, Badin High School, hooked up with the service last fall after their county commissioners agreed to pick up the tab. In other districts, federal grants cover the cost.
“Some issues might not have been brought to our attention if it weren't for the help line,” Mr. Baratko said. “We also have calls about students who may be coming to school angry, who are going to perhaps start a fight with another student. This gives us some time to get those students together, have some conflict resolution.”
In Loveland, which also signed on last year, the service helped them stop a fight that was supposed to occur off school grounds, Superintendent Michael Cline said.
So far, the help line has been a deterrent at Mount Healthy schools, which has received about half as many calls this year compared to last year, said Jerry Oberdorf, the district's director of administrative services.
“We also feel that our suspensions and expulsions are down,” he said.
Last year, a tip enabled school officials to alert parents to a student who reportedly showed off a knife on the bus. Parents then found it in the student's book bag, Mr. Oberdorf said.
The hot line has helped school officials “rattle some cages” and alerted the district to student activity in the Talawanda schools in Butler County, said Superintendent Susan Cobb. However, the district also had to chase down a couple of prank calls, she said.
“It's very time consuming. When we look at these 15 (calls as of last week), and say there's one that ended up with a beneficial result, it's hard to say if that's worthwhile or not,” she said.
Still, administrators at Northwest Local have been reminding students about the service since the shooting.
Even busy parents should be able to pick up the phone and call the help line if they hear their children talk about trouble, said Amy Conover, a Lebanon parent of three.
“I think that's part of the problem now in society. Parents are busy. ... Having something as easy as a phone call to make would encourage parents, even busy parents, to take a moment out of their time.”
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