Thursday, August 19, 1999
Ohio looks at violence in schools
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS — School violence seems light years away from the Evergreen School District in northwest Ohio.
Nevertheless, the district — in a rural area that has only one traffic light — will spend upward of $200,000 on surveillance cameras, secure entrances and an in-school sheriff's office as it builds a new high school, Superintendent Russell Griggs said Wednesday.
“Back when it was city people shooting city people, there wasn't that much attention paid to it,” Mr. Griggs said as a gathering of state and national educators and law enforcement officials on school safety got under way. “Now, since it's in small-town America, it can happen anywhere.”
Gov. Bob Taft and Attorney General Betty Montgomery sponsored the two-day Safe Schools Summit, focusing on juvenile and school violence.
Reports indicate that school violence, including the number of guns being brought to school, is dropping.
But there is little question that school violence, whether real or anticipated, is disrupting teaching and learning, said Pamela Riley, executive director of the Raleigh, N.C.-based Center for the Prevention of School Violence.
Mr. Taft and Ms. Montgomery said Ohio schools are safe. But there are troubling statistics, Ms. Montgomery said, noting that 436 students were disciplined for having a gun on school property in the 1997-98 school year, including 101 elementary students.
“This is not a summit about schools. This is a summit about violence — how to prevent it and how to deal with it in the places it could occur, in the school system,” Ms. Montgomery said.
In addition to offering tips on how to handle a school tragedy, almost all speakers criticized the massive media coverage that has followed each U.S. school shooting.
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