Phila. school violence spurs a new commission

Describing violence in city classrooms as a "very sobering" problem, leaders, advocates and students gathered Tuesday to focus on the issue - and ways to fix it.

The day began with the Philadelphia School District convening a blue ribbon commission on safe schools. Later, a "youth power summit" drew 200 students to talk about the issues.

The district panel will meet quarterly and issue annual reports. Led by Superintendent Arlene Ackerman and Mayor Nutter, the group said its work was spurred, in part, by "the recent surge in youth homicide, school violence, ethnic intimidation, flash mobs, and 'catch and wreck' assaults on citizens."

Its goals include reducing the district's "persistently dangerous" schools from 20 to 0.

Another target is to help the district implement recommendations from state safety audits on 25 dangerous schools.

Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International Inc., a private firm hired to complete the audits, said that the firm has "never had a client accept every recommendation for it," a sign that the district means business.

Forty-six district schools have been named to the district's "Focus 46" list - schools that are either currently or formerly persistently dangerous or trending that way. Each has problems with daily attendance, chronic truancy, and violent incident rate.

Though just 17 percent of all district students attend the Focus 46 schools, half of all suspensions come from these schools and 48 percent of all violent incidents occur in the schools. Nearly 75 percent of all students expelled by the district come from these trouble spots.

"That is very sobering data," said Tomas Hanna, an assistant superintendent.

Hanna said the district and the committee would work to boost attendance, decrease truancy, out-of-school suspensions and violent incidents.

Teams of district staff and committee members will visit each of the Focus 46 schools and evaluate them on dozens of safety measures.

Panel member Seth Williams, Philadelphia's district attorney, promised real change. "This commission is going to look at the problem anew," Williams said, "and not just come up with the same solutions."

While officials talked about how they would tackle the issue of school violence, another group began similar work.

The "Campaign for Nonviolent Schools," an umbrella organization including the Philadelphia Student Union, Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, Youth United for Change and others, held its Youth Power Summit later in the day.

All day, students attended workshops on moving past bias violence, knowing your rights, and conflict resolution.

Lawrence Mahoney-Jones, a Drexel student and recent West Philadelphia High graduate, said that he felt that students have an important role to play.

"Violence is a systemic problem," Mahoney-Jones said. "There's stuff going on inside the schools, and we can help make it better."