U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250

Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

73–138 2001

S. HRG. 106–1010

SCHOOL CRIME PREVENTION PROGRAMS

HEARING

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MAY 15, 2000

NEW CASTLE, DE

Serial No. J–106–28

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman

STROM THURMOND, South Carolina

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania

JON KYL, Arizona

MIKE DEWINE, Ohio

JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri

SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama

BOB SMITH, New Hampshire

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware

HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York

MANUS COONEY, Chief Counsel and Staff Director

BRUCE A. COHEN, Minority Chief Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

STATEMENT OF COMMITTEE MEMBER

Page

Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., a U.S. Senator from the State of Delaware ............. 1

WITNESSES

Lleiman, Bryan, Principal, Miami Springs High School, on behalf of the

Youth Crime Watch of America, prepared statement ....................................... 27

Giles, Jeff, Corporal, Delaware State Police, and School Resource Officer,

William Penn High School .................................................................................. 35

Riley, Pam, Executive Director, Center for the Prevention of School Violence,

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 6

Yeakey, Jon, Coordinator, National Resource Center for Safe Schools, prepared statment and attachments ........................................................................ 16

(1)

SCHOOL CRIME PREVENTION PROGRAMS

MONDAY, MAY 15, 2000

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, New Castle, DE.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:58 a.m., in Wallace

Wallin Building, Basin Road, New Castle, DE, Hon. Joseph Biden,

presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., A U.S.

SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF DELAWARE

Senator BIDEN. Good morning, everyone. I want my friends in

the Delaware legislature, particularly the Senator, to observe this

may be the first time I have ever started anything early. Check

your watch. It is three minutes early.

Gentlemen and ladies and our witnesses, I have the very

undeserved reputation of being late occasionally. Bruce Reynolds,

the State Representative from here, and also, he is a good guy, he

is from the wrong party but he is a good guy and he is a great

coach and a good friend, I want him to mark that the next banquet

we attend, he will acknowledge I started something early.

I want to begin by thanking Dr. Meney, the Assistant Superintendent of the Colonial School District, for accompanying us here

today, and State Representative Mike Mulrooney, who is a good

buddy of mine, a guy that when I need something done, I ask for

help. I already mentioned Bruce Reynolds, who is an old friend, a

William Penn High School teacher and truly one of the great coaches in the State of Delaware, I think one of the greatest coaches as

long as I have been around. I also want to thank Monte Gerheardt

of the Colonial School District; Kathleen Silbur, Colonial School

District Board President; Rich Farmer, Assistant Principal of William Penn High School; Dr. Dave Robinson, Superintendent of the

Caesar Rodney School District—Doctor, thank you for coming up— and Dr. Dave Campbell, Superintendent of the Colonial School District.

I want the real Senator in the district—Senator, would you stand

up, sir? I know the real Senator is here. Thank you for allowing

me to be in your district, and I am flattered that the three of you

would come. This is a bit of a busman’s holiday for a member of

the legislature to come to a hearing that another member of the

legislature is putting on, but it is a testament to the kind of—and

speaking of that, the Speaker of the State House of Representatives

is here, Terry Spence. Terry, how are you? Thank you very much

for being here. I am flattered you would take the time to come.

2

For those of you from out of State, I should tell you that this is

unusual, but this is sort of typical of Delaware. When it comes to

problems and/or solutions, one of the great advantages of this small

State is that we can literally get everybody in one room and there

is very, very, very little partisanship in this State. We get along

well.

I also want to thank members of the Delaware State Police for

being here. It is not an accident to point out that they are the best

State police organization in America, but then again, I am mildly

prejudiced. Thanks for being here.

I also want to thank our distinguished panel for making the

extra effort to be here today, and I am going to introduce them

shortly, but I have a brief opening statement.

First, let me say right up front that many of you might think I

have acquired my knowledge or the lack of it on crime prevention,

particularly as it relates to schools, from my 27 years of doing this

on the Judiciary Committee, but I have not acquired it there. I acquired it from my wife, who has been a school teacher in the public

school system for 17 years and now teaches at the community college.

My wife is, like some of the teachers in this room—I am very

prejudiced. She is always embarrassed when I mention it, not embarrassed, she gets angry when I use her to make any kind of

point, but I really have observed over the last 22 years now that

she has been teaching, 23 years—well, let me put it this way. My

mom has an expression, ‘‘If you want to know me, come live with

me.’’

Well, if you live with a teacher who takes her job very, very seriously, you get a real insight into the problems that teachers and

administrators face and the opportunities. So daily, I get input on

the optimal environment in which students should be learning and

classroom sizes, what to do about the extremely disruptive students, and her bewilderment as to why those of us who hold public

office are not smarter. So I called this hearing today to discuss

what is being done across the country to make schools safer places

for our children.

Every State in this country has a school crime prevention program in place, with Delaware leading the pack with some very innovative and model initiatives. But today, I wanted us to be able

to hear how important it is to get responsible adults into the lives

of our children and give kids positive alternatives to crime and violence, because kids want to be kids and we need to give them an

opportunity to be kids.

Our goal today, it seems to me, should be to ensure that everyone who is concerned about violence in our schools knows about all

that is being done and all that they can do to help. The fact is that

a majority of schools in the United States of America, the vast majority are very safe places. According to data compiled by the Children’s Law Center, there was a 40 percent decline in school-associated violent deaths between the years 1997 and 1998 and 1998 and

the end of the school year 1999. But the number of people who

were scared of school violence, who thought there was much more

than there is, rose 50 percent during this same time. So we have

this inverse proportion. We had the crime actually going down, not

3

only in Delaware but throughout the nation, but the concern about

crime escalating.

I do not want anyone in the press to misunderstand the purpose

of the hearing. As they accurately reported in today’s paper and on

the radio, this is not a, quote, ‘‘Columbine-type hearing.’’ I was yesterday at the Million Mom March and met with the President on

the White House lawn. I think there is great concern about those

aspects that brought about the circumstances which allowed for

Columbine to happen. I happen to be one who thinks that guns are

much too available to our children, that there are rational things

we can do.

I am the one who drafted the juvenile justice bill, along with

Senator Hatch, that has those three simple provisions in it that we

cannot even get the House of Representatives to meet with us on— trigger locks, not allowing clips that have 17 or more bullets in a

clip to be able to be manufactured and sold in the United States,

and this gun loophole. Ask the county, city, or State police here.

You go to a gun show and you can buy whatever you want. If the

gun show is held on a Friday night, if you have a 72-hour check,

it is not until Monday and if you only have a 24-hour check, they

can buy the gun and be gone. So they are simple things.

But that is not what this is about. This is more about how to

take what already good is happening and give everyone, and I will

be handing out a catalogue, or actually we should have given them

to you already if you have not seen them, a ‘‘Catalogue for Safe

Schools: A Resource Guide to School Violence Prevention.’’ A young

man on my staff, Eli, put this together. This is not original to us.

What we do, what our primary function is, is to go out and catalog

from around the country many of the programs that people we are

about to hear from have gone out and catalogued and/or innovated

and so they are made available. We have done this in the Violence

Against Women Act. We did this in the Biden crime law. Our local

police, our local courts, our local hospitals have taken advantage of

some of the innovative programs other States have initiated, and

that is part of the purpose today.

But according to the same study I cited earlier, there is a one

in two million chance—one in two million—that a teenage child

would die in school in the year 1998–1999. But again, 71 percent

of the people in America said that a school shooting was likely.

Seventy-one percent said a school shooting was likely to happen in

their community school.

Juvenile homicide arrests decreased by 56 percent from 1993 to

1998, in large part because of the uniforms you see out here, but

62 percent of the people polled in America believe that juvenile

crime is on the rise when, in fact, there has been a precipitous decline, as in all other violent crime over the last seven years. We

have a serious public perception problem.

Yet, while violence is on the decline, there is still much too much

of it. I was asked recently by one of the national press people, was

I proud that the Biden crime law was credited for reducing crime—

that is not the only reason crime is down, by any stretch of the

imagination, but I think it is a major reason, putting another

100,000 cops in the street, building more prisons and providing $9

million in prevention money, not the only reason, though—and I

4

was asked if I was proud. I said, well, I am proud. It has been

down six to seven percent every year, but it is not down to the levels it was in 1955 or 1950. That is what I am shooting for. It is

much better, and I am sure everybody in the audience is looking

for that, as well.

So we cannot become complacent. We have to keep up the excellent work that has started here in Delaware and around the country. So what is working?

Today, as I said, I am releasing this ‘‘Catalogue for Safe Schools’’ for all the school superintendents, teachers, and parents here

today, and by the way, I am aware of that old joke and it happens

to be true here. Many of you have forgotten more about school violence and how to deal with it than I am likely to learn. You are

in it every single day. You deal with it every single day. So I do

not want to come across as that old joke about the definition of an

expert, an expert is anyone from out of town with a briefcase. Well,

I am from town and I do not have a briefcase, but I am trying to

be helpful.

For all the school superintendents and teachers, I hope they will

find it a valuable resource guide. It is a catalogue of some of the

best sources of technical assistance, program planning, funding information, and up-to-date research on school violence prevention,

and as many of you know, I have always been a strong advocate

of prevention programs. That is not to say that I think we should

be soft on those who commit crimes, but I think we are expending

our money much more wisely if we spent more of it on prevention.

Those of you who know me, and there are a number of Delawareans here today who do and I have worked with, know that I

believe that there comes a time when punishment is the only answer. But when we are talking about our kids, we can do so much

more than we have been doing. If we can just catch the behavior

before it spirals out of control, then we will have an opportunity

to really help our kids, and the best way to keep our kids out of

trouble is to offer them positive alternatives, such as after-school

programs. Kids, in my experience, want excuses.

I go back, if you take a look at the crowd here today, whether

it is Mike or Bruce or any of us, we grew up. We were pretty good

athletes, we were pretty tough kids, and we looked for excuses. You

would walk out in the street and a kid would say to you, come on,

let us do such and such, whether it was drinking, drugs, or fighting, and you would say, yeah, I would love to do that, man, but I

have got practice, or, man, yeah, I do that all the time, but you

know, I have got to go here. Kids need excuses. They need excuses.

So I would like to see us give them more excuses to do the right

thing. They need to be able to say, I would like to have that beer,

I would like to smoke that joint, but I have got to go to the Boys’

Club or I have got basketball practice or I am committed to do such

and such.

But the best chance that we have to solve this problem is

through the students themselves. We have to expect more from our

students. We cannot pretend to be the ones to know what their

problems are if they already know them. My mother has an expression. She says, children tend to become that which you expect of

them. I happen to think she is right. They are the ones in the lockVerDate 11-MAY-2000 03:54 Sep 08, 2001 Jkt 073138 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B138.XXX pfrm02 PsN: B138
5

er room and the library. They are the ones that know the kids who

are in trouble. They are the ones who know which kids are depressed and which kids are doing drugs and they are the ones who

see the bullying and they are the ones who know better than us

how to stop it if we can help them.

On this issue, one high school junior recently said, ‘‘Everyone

knows that violence in schools is a serious problem that is facing

schools all across the country. Some schools are even trying to take

action to prevent the violence,’’ continued the quote. ‘‘But what

happens when these schools do so without the help of the students?

From experience, I can tell you that things will get worse. It is important to take action to prevent school violence. But when doing

so, take into consideration the reaction of students. I do not think

enough people realize that students want to help and that they

want to help. We are the ones who are going to ultimately bring

violence to an end.’’

So what can kids do, or young students do? They need to be

taught to listen to their friends who are sharing their problems and

support them while receiving help. They can be the role models for

other kids by learning tolerance and finding constructive alternatives to anger, and they can and should report threats of violence

and drug use. Kids can serve as mentors to younger people.

This is the crux of what brings us here today. We have to realize

that the expertise of our children, without their participation, I do

not think we will ever solve the problem, so how do we do this?

Well, the Center for Prevention of School Violence is doing the

right thing with their student courts, peer mediation, and studentinitiated programs. These programs empower students and give

them control over issues that are often effective. These programs

give them an opportunity to be responsible, contributing members

of the school and society.

Our panels today will bring some of these programs to light with

their testimony and their answers. Corporal Jeff Giles will talk

about one of the most successful common sense solutions, community policing for schools. Corporal Giles is one of the 16 school resource officers, most of whom have been hired through the Biden

crime law. In fact, one of the reasons that I wanted to hold this

hearing here at William Penn School was that it is the first Delaware high school to receive such a resource officer. School resource

officers and some outstanding new programs funded and initiated

by the Delaware General Assembly, Governor Carper, and the

State Education Department are producing significant and positive

results.

A recent study showed that crime in Delaware schools is down,

as well. Bryan Kleiman will tell us about Youth Crime Watch of

America. You have all heard of Neighborhood Crime Watch. Brian

is out to help students set up local crime watches to prevent illegal

drug use, gang violence, and thefts.

Pam Riley, the Director of the Center for the Prevention of

School Violence, which serves like a library of information on preventing school violence, also is here to testify.

And Jon Yeakey is a coordinator for the National Resource Center for Safe Schools, which works with parents and teachers. It

6

helps students with anger management, mentoring, and peer counseling.

To continue to make our schools safer, we know one thing for

sure. There is no silver bullet. It takes superintendents, principals,

teachers, parents, school board members, elected officials, nonprofit

groups such as Boys’ Clubs and Girls’ Clubs and the YMCA and

YWCA’s all working hand in hand.

But Congress can also help with legislation like the amendment

we passed last week, which I wholeheartedly supported. I first

learned about the problem this amendment dealt with again from

my wife, Jill. School officials and even teachers are becoming increasingly concerned that they will be held liable for actions they

take concerning school discipline, and that is why last week we

supported an amendment to make teachers immune from frivolous

lawsuits after intervening in a fight or removing a disruptive student from a classroom unless they have violated the student’s civil

rights. We ask an awful lot of teachers these days. Their time is

much too valuable and they should not have to worry about frivolous lawsuits.

There is a great deal being done around the country and still

more that can be done to address this problem, and that is why we

are here today. This is a problem that we can tackle, and with the

help of those most affected, we can fix it. I am looking forward to

hearing from all of our witnesses today and sharing ideas and

begin talking positively about what is done.

Again, I wish we had time, but I would invite any of my colleagues in the legislature here today, as the witnesses finish, if

they would like to pull a chair up here and ask questions with me

and participate in this hearing, which I realize is unusual—I do not

want to embarrass them, but if they may want to do that, I would

be delighted to have them take part.

Why do we not now begin the testimony, and I sincerely mean

that. If any of our colleagues in the legislature wish to, when they

finish testifying, come on up and sit and ask questions, I am sure

they would not mind. Again, you are the ones here. You are the

ones dealing with it every day. I get on the train and go to Washington and I read about it or hear about it. You are here every single day.

Again, thank you all for being here, and Ms. Riley, why do we

not start with your testimony and work our way across. Thanks

again for being here.

STATEMENT OF PAM RILEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER

FOR THE PREVENTION OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE

Ms. RILEY. Thank you very much, Senator Biden. It is a real opportunity to be here and be able to talk with you, especially about

the issue of school violence.

The Center for the Prevention of School Violence has its eyes focused on a vision, and this is a vision that I think many in the

country share and that vision is that every student should be able

to attend a school that is safe and secure, free of fear and conducive to learning. I think the last part of that is very important, conducive to learning. We do not need to turn our schools into prisons,

7

but we do need to provide that level of safety and security where

teachers can teach and students can learn.

And you mentioned it in your opening remarks. We have safe

schools. Maybe we should be looking at how to make our schools

safer, and I think many of the schools in the country do not experience the crime that—the perception that schools are unsafe and

that there is rampant crime in the schools. The recent reports show

us that, in fact, school violence has leveled off, and in some cases

and in many categories has actually gone down.

I think what we have to do here is look at more than just crime

when we are talking about school violence. What is school violence?

Do we all have a different idea as we are talking about that? Are

we talking about murder, suicide, rape, or are we talking about incidents of disruption and disorder in the classroom?

I think we can look at school violence on a continuum and we

have to address the things early on in that continuum, at one end,

such as pushing and shoving and bullying and trash talk. These

are incidents that are occurring each and every day in classrooms.

So it might be that, in fact, school crime is down, but, in fact, the

disruption and disorder in the classrooms are occurring, and we do

have to address those issues. If we let bullying and trash talk, intimidation, he said/she said type of incidents go on, these can escalate into major confrontations.

So how much school violence is occurring? The most recent reports show us that one out of ten schools report a serious crime to

law enforcement, but when we ask students, when we ask teachers,

when we ask parents, they are wanting us to focus in on discipline

and disruption issues. There are trends that the Center for the Prevention of School Violence has identified occurring now across the

country.

No. 1, that there is certainly more attention being placed on this

particular topic. We merely have to mention the towns that are

now so familiar to us—Paducah, Jonesboro, Littleton—and the ‘‘it

cannot happen here’’ mentality just can no longer be accepted.

Schools are realizing that they must plan for safety, that schools

are not immune from the guns, drugs, and violence that we see in

our community, and in order to have safer environments for learning, we must plan for safety.

The Center for the Prevention of School Violence is working with

school districts across the country with their safe school plans.

These plans should have three parts. Number one, we need to prevent incidents from happening in the first place, so prevention

needs to be a part of safe school planning.

No. 2, we need to intervene as events are occurring. If we recognize early warning signs, for instance, there needs to be procedures

in place in the school and in the community to intervene and to

bring young people back into the education mainstream. And if we

do not intervene, then there is the chance that an incident could

escalate into a major confrontation.

So prevention, intervention, and then No. 3 is response. School

districts need to have in their plan a way to respond if there is a

crisis that occurs, to respond while it is happening and to respond

after it occurs. I think we have seen the aftermath of the school

shootings have been something that has not stopped, that these

8

school districts and schools that do experience the media high-profile event continue to have the problem of dealing with it. So safe

school planning, prevention, intervention, and crisis response.

What is working as far as safe school planning? Assessing needs.

Too often, we see around the country that school districts put in

a safe school plan and put in strategies without assessing what

their needs are. So it is important for school districts to do an assessment, what is going on that is working in our school district,

in our community, what are our needs, what are our challenges.

And we look at assessing needs, we call it the four ‘‘S’’s of safe

school planning assessment. Number one, that you do site assessments. You walk across the grounds, you walk in the school building, and you try to determine where the trouble spots are. The

school resource officer can be a terrific resource for—— Senator BIDEN. Give me an example of what you mean. How do

you do a site assessment? What would be an indication of trouble

in walking and doing a site assessment? Give me an example of

something that would be a red flag.

Ms. RILEY. In the locker areas, for instance, looking for possible

conflict situations where lockers are close in and students are having to get to their locker without bothering someone else. Lockers

that are stacked are not good, and, in fact, many school districts

are actually taking out lockers because of the difficulty that they

are seeing with that. Asking students what they—where in the

school—— Senator BIDEN. Does it relate to the physical plant?

Ms. RILEY. Yes, sir.

Senator BIDEN. The site assessment does, OK.

Ms. RILEY. The physical environment, but that site assessment

can also include the school climate, because we have to be ready,

attacks from within or attacks from without. So we want to look

at fencing and lighting, for instance. How do you harden the target

of your school to make it less likely that an incident will occur?

And that is one thing that I wanted to mention. Having been a

high school principal myself, there are no guarantees that another

incident will not occur, but there are certainly things that schools

and communities can do to decrease the potential for violence occurring, and one of those things on the list is site assessment.

Looking at statistics. Look at your numbers. Look at where incidents happen, when they happen, who they happen to, and that

will give you an idea of what is going on on your campus.

Next——

Senator BIDEN. Can I ask you another question about that? Sorry

to interrupt.

Ms. RILEY. That is OK.

Senator BIDEN. I want to make sure I understand, and maybe

the audience understands all this, but I am not sure. When you say

statistics, is your experience that most schools keep good statistics?

The reason I say that is that years ago, 12 years ago, I invited

every school principal in Delaware to another hearing like this on

guns in school and not a single principal would come. Not a single

principal wanted to be asked the question whether or not there are

guns in school, even though I knew of four incidents personally.

When you are married to a teacher, you hang with teachers, and

9

I knew of four incidents, and I mean it sincerely, four incidents in

four high schools and not one principal was willing to come, not

one superintendent was willing to come because none of them of

them wanted to admit that their school had a gun in it or had a

gun brought to school.

So my experience, and that is 12 years old and maybe things

have changed a lot, but my experience was schools are not very

honest, nor are universities. I am the guy who did the binge drinking stuff and the rape statistics. They do not want to keep them.

If they keep them, they are there and they make them look bad.

Are they honest? Are there school statistics?

Ms. RILEY. I think it is getting better, but certainly there are

problems. A principal who turns in an incident then risks someone

saying, well, you run an unsafe school here.

Senator BIDEN. You are a lousy principal.

Ms. RILEY. But if you look at the other side of that now, if you

have a situation that has been covered up and something does

occur, then it is much, much worse. So I think principals are understanding that you cannot come up with solutions unless you

know what your problems are.

Senator BIDEN. OK.

Ms. RILEY. So statistics, but just for the point that you brought

up, also surveys. Survey parents. Survey students. Survey staff

members and say, is this a safe school?

Senator BIDEN. How do you do that?

Ms. RILEY. With survey instruments.

Senator BIDEN. So you actually go out and essentially do a poll?

Ms. RILEY. That is correct. Ask students, do you feel safe at this

school, and they will tell you. Are there places at the school you

are afraid to go, and that might be the reason why you need to

have some security equipment. So the survey is a check to the statistics.

There are incidents that principals have turned in, they have

come to the superintendent and they turn in their yearly report

and there is a smile on their face. ‘‘I had no fights this year.’’ But

you survey the students and the students say, ‘‘Well, I am afraid

to go to the bathroom because I get beat up.’’

Senator BIDEN. That is the point I am making. Now, again, I am

not speaking about any—I mean this sincerely—any particular

principal or assistant. It seems to me there is sort of a genre in

all States. I have been doing this not just here. That is why I am

wondering how you got the statistics, but the survey seems pretty

impressive. It is an impressive notion to figure what the kids really

worry about.

Ms. RILEY. But the number of States now that are requiring

school districts to turn in crime reporting is growing. There were

12 States a few years ago and now a few more have been added.

So that is one recommendation that I would make. You cannot find

solutions until you know what the problems are.

And then the final ‘‘S’’, we have site assessment, statistics, surveys, the final ‘‘S’’ is students, connecting students to schools, involving students in problem solving. If you have a problem at that

school, involve kids in helping you with solutions. They are terrific

10

at working through problems and can be a very important part of

what is happening with, say, school planning.

So assess your problems. Number two, then plan, and when you

plan, you want to involve programs that are promising programs

for preventing school violence. Our center has developed a pyramid

of safe school programs that are research-based for preventing

school violence, and this pyramid has strategies that involve the

entire community in safe school planning.

School resource officers are at the foundation of this pyramid, because we believe that school law enforcement partnerships are a

very important part of making sure that your school is safe. Teachers and administrators were trained to teach and they are educators. Unfortunately now, we have crime in schools and we are

trying to prevent it from entering schools, and school resource officers, law enforcement, they are trained to deal with crime. Having

them in the school environment to deal with crime allows our

teachers and administrators to get back to the business of teaching

and learning and focusing on that.

Other programs that we see that are working across the country,

quickly and I will finish up here, law-related education, good citizenship and character education, helping young people to understand not only their rights but their responsibilities. Conflict management skills and peer mediation—everyone needs to know how

to handle conflict more effectively, and peer mediation is one of

those areas in schools that is working to help young people.

SAVE is another program on our pyramid, Students Against Violence Everywhere. SAVE now is in 28 States. We have young people all across this country that are saying we want our hallways

back, our restrooms back, our classrooms back for what they were

meant for, and SAVE is an organization to allow young people to

be a part of safe school planning efforts.

Teen court and student court, again, peer-focused programs. And

then at the top of our pyramid, physical design and technology,

being sure that in the school setting we do provide for the security

needs.

We can make the place of school safe, but what about the people

within that place? People and relationships are important, and as

we look up our pyramid, we can see here physical environment

strategies to make schools safer and also strategies to help people

to better deal with relationships, student to student, student to

staff member, and how about this one, staff member to staff member because we are role models for kids, and that will help us to

get back to the purpose of schooling, which is academic excellence,

not drug deals, not bringing guns to school, but academic excellence.

So our hope is through these ideas with safe school planning, focusing on involving parents, involving students, involving the entire community in safe school planning, that every student will be

able to attend a school that is safe and secure, free of fear, and conducive to learning.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you, Ms. Riley.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Riley follows:]

11

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAMELA L. RILEY ON BEHALF OF THE CENTER FOR THE

PREVENTION OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE

The Center for the Prevention of School Violence operates with its eyes focused

on a vision. This vision is that ‘‘Every student will attend a school that is safe and

secure, one that is free of fear and conducive to learning.’’ The elements which comprise this vision highlight that every student is entitled to attend a safe school, that

schools need to be places that maintain climates that are characterized by safety

and security, that these schools must be free from even ungrounded feelings of fear,

and that these schools provide environments that are conducive to the educational

missions of all schools—teaching and learning.

Concern as to whether schools across the country are living this vision every day

they open the school-house doors obviously has been heightened by specific incidents

we have experienced collectively as a nation. The names of the locations of these

incidents are well known to all: Pearl, Mississippi, West Paducah, Kentucky;

Jonesboro, Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon, Littleton, Colorado. While these incidents

have captured our attention to legitimately by concerned about the safety of our

children and youth as they attend school, they do not truly reflect the everyday realities of schools across the country.

This reality is reflected in the increasing number of reports which convey that

school violence as reflected by the types of discipline and criminal incidents that are

being documented is not on the rise but, in fact, has been at least occurring at somewhat constant rates and has even decreased in some categories. Findings from the

U.S. Department of Education’s 1999 Annual Report on School Safety illustrate this

reality:

• Most injuries which occur at school are not the result of violence;

• Student ages 12 through 18 are more likely to be victims of serious violent

crimes away from school than at school;

• The overall school crime rate between 1993 and 1997 declined, from about

155 school-related crimes for every 1,000 students ages 12 to 18 in 1993, to

about 102 such crimes in 1997;

• Fewer students are carrying weapons and engaging in physical fights on

school grounds.

As stated in the Annual Report, schools are the safest places children and youngsters spend time on a day-to-day basis. The chances of a student being killed in an

incident such as the ones we have experienced are less than one in a million.

So, if this is what the numbers are saying, why do we need to pursue efforts to

make schools safer places for teaching and learning? The answer is complex and begins with understanding that the one-in-a-million odds do not provide a comfort

zone for parents who see their children go off to school every morning. Many students, teachers, administrators, and other school staffer also do not all see the odds

as potential armor with which they can shield themselves should an incident occur.

Additionally, the ‘‘it can’t happen here’’ philosophy of school safety cannot be afforded. The Annual Report points out that while the number of homicides has decreased in recent years, the number of multiple-homicide incidents has increased.

The fact that we are even talking about multiple-homicide incidents taking place at

schools should give us pause to examine the efforts schools are pursuing to make

their environments safer.

And indeed, another key to understanding the need to pursue efforts is that

schools are in the mode of making their environments safer—not just safe. The vast

majority of schools can already be described as ‘‘safe’’ environments; a relative few

experience incidents which must be reported to law enforcement agencies. Most of

the incidents which occur are of the variety that fall under the umbrella of school

discipline and not law enforcement action.

This acknowledgement, however, does not dismiss the fact that incidents occur;

it only helps us understand that efforts directed at making schools safer places must

be targeted to the more common occurrences being experienced in schools across our

nation. And the linkage of these more common occurrences to the potential occurrence of more serious incidents must not go unacknowledged. If we are to truly prevent more serious incidents from happening, we need to target as much effort as

possible at the incidents that are of a disciplinary nature while still preparing ourselves to intervene and respond when criminal and violent situations occur.

The Center for the Prevention of School Violence defines ‘‘school violence’’ as ‘‘any

behavior that violates a school’s educational mission or climate of respect or jeopardizes the intent of the school to be free of aggression against persons or property,

drugs, weapons, disruptions, and disorder.’’ These behaviors exist along a continuum

which reflects, as movement occurs from one end of the continuum to the other, increasing escalation in the seriousness of the behavior. Movement along the conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 03:54 Sep 08, 2001 Jkt 073138 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\B138.XXX pfrm02 PsN: B138
12

tinuum takes us from disciplinary concerns to crime and violence concerns. On one

end of the continuum are behaviors such as put downs, insults, trash talking, and

bullying; on the other end are hate crimes, gangs, rape, murder, and suicide. Our

work across the country confirms that the disciplinary concerns are where we need

to focus prevention efforts while at the same time building school and community

capacities to prevent, intervene, and respond should escalation to more serious incidents be likely or actually occur.

How we go about focusing our prevention, intervention, and response efforts is

critical because it provides a framework for actions that need to be taken at the national, state, and local levels. What needs to occur at all levels is a process which

involves four steps: assessment of conditions which includes assessment of both

strengths and weaknesses/needs/problems; comprehensive planning; ‘‘best-practices’’

implementation; and utilization-focused evaluation.

As the first step, the assessment of conditions enables us to understand the status

quo. From such knowledge, we can better plan, implement, and evaluate efforts. To

undertake assessment, we need to identify trends that help both define the status

quo and offer some sense of direction for the future.

The Center for the Prevention of School Violence has identified continuing trends

and emerging trends and strategies as it endeavors to make its vision a reality. The

continuing trends, first articulated in the mid 1990s, include:

• Increasing attention being paid to the problem of school violence;

• Growing awareness that educational missions of schools are being disrupted

by the problem;

• Rising and intensified concern over the severity of the problem; and

• Acknowledgement of the negative consequences that the problem generates.

Emerging trends, identified in late 1999, include:

• Intense media coverage of school violence incidents;

• Better understanding, as articulated in the above discussion of the continuum, of the nature of ‘‘school violence’’;

• Increased efforts to identify ‘’best practices’’;

• Heightened emphasis placed upon program ‘‘effectiveness’’;

• Pursuit of involvement of more stakeholders—particularly students, parents, and communities members—in efforts directed at making schools safer;

and

• More attention paid to comprehensive efforts which involve prevention,

intervention, and response.

Emerging strategies which are being pursued by schools and communities include:

• The development of crisis management plans;

• The conduct of audits and assessments of the physical security of schools

with application of crime prevention principles;

• The application of security technologies such as metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and specialized locking systems;

• The full-time assignment of law enforcement officers, particularly School

Resource Officers (SROs), to schools in roles that allow for comprehensive services to be performed;

• Training of all school staff in identification of early and imminent warning

signs as well as in response to these signs;

• Emphasis on conflict management skills and character education; and

• Reexamination of school codes of conduct with emphasis on consequences

and consistent enforcement.

The continuing and emerging trends and strategies provide a sense of what is taking place and the direction in which school safety efforts are headed. At the national

level, knowledge of these trends and strategies enables us to think through planning, implementation, and evaluation issues which ultimately involve the question

of how the capacities of states and local communities and schools can be enhanced

to address their particular assessed conditions.

At the state level, the past year has seen task forces, legislative study commissions, and summits convened to assess conditions and plan for the future. Additionally, in many states, examination of laws and policies which relate to school safety

has taken place.

North Carolina, the home state of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence, reaped the benefit of Governor Jim Hunt’s creation of the Governor’s Task

Force on Youth Violence and School Safety which met over the summer of 1999 and

actually served two functions. Because North Carolina had had a Task Force on

School Violence in 1993, one function the 1999 Task Force was charged with was

revisiting what the state had accomplished since 1993 and determining what it has

yet to do. The second function it served was as a response to the heightened public

13

concern about school violence which Columbine and the other school shootings had

prompted.

North Carolina’s Task Force recommendations are somewhat reflective of what

other state task forces, study commissions, and summits in many states including

Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and South Carolina. Six main recommendations were offered by the Task Force and provide some sense of direction at the

state level: • All parents must be involved in their children’s education. • Student involvement is essential to promoting school safety. • Every school should be given the tools needed to develop and implement

stronger school safety plans, including a set of accountability standards to

measure the progress of their plan. • There must be support for efforts to provide every student and every school

staff member with a school environment free from violence and the threat of

violence, conducive to learning, and characterized by caring, respect for all, and

sensitivity to diversity. • Early identification of risk factors and behavioral problems must take

place. Prevention and intervention strategies can be best implemented through

early identification. • Everyone must take responsibility for the communities where our youth are

raised.

This list of recommendations further generated Action Items which include: • The establishment of a statewide anonymous tip line for reporting school

safety concerns with an accompanying education campaign directed at bringing

all stakeholders together to ‘‘Work Against Violence Everywhere’’ (WAVE); • Early warning signs information being sent to parents; • Reviews of state-required safe school plans and planning; • Dissemination of Task Force results to all school superintendents, local

boards of education, principals, parent organizations, Students Against Violence

Everywhere (S.A.V.E.) chapters; and School Resource Officers (SROs) so that actions based upon Task Force results could be undertaken; and • Pursuit of a project by the Center for the Prevention of School Violence directed at training pre-service teachers and administrators in conflict management strategies.

School year 1999–2000 saw implementation of these Action Items.

With all of these efforts being put forth at the state level across the country, the

bulk of efforts to make our schools safer still lies at the local level with schools and

communities truly pursuing the previously identified steps of assessment, planning,

implementation, and evaluation. It is at this level that enhanced capacities become

most critical. The U.S. Department of Education’s Early Warning/Timely Response:

A Guide To Safe Schools makes a strong argument for such enhanced capacities and

provides some direction as to what schools need to direct efforts towards in its delineation of the characteristics of safe schools:

• Focus on academic achievement;

• Meaningful involvement of families;

• Links to the community;

• Positive relationships among students and staff;

• Awareness and discussion of safety issues;

• Equal respectful treatment of students;

• Involvement of students;

• An environment receptive to the student expression of concerns;

• Referral systems for students who are suspected of being abused or neglected;

• Extended day programs;

• Promotion of good citizenship and character;

• Problem-solving processes to address situations that occur; and

• Support for students as they experience transitional phases.

With this knowledge in mind, schools and communities know what to focus upon

as they work toward their own visions of what safety in their schools would look

like. To further this work, the assessment of conditions needs to take place so that

the planning, implementation, and evaluation which follow will be aligned with

what already is in place and what is identified as a problem or need.

The Center for the Prevention of School Violence provides a framework for this

assessment which is delineated by the ‘‘Four S’s’’ of assessment: site assessment;

statistics; surveys; and student involvement. Site assessment involves examination

of the physical security of the school as well as the school’s climate to determine

how to best ensure that the physical environment is as secure as possible from both

outside and inside attack while balancing this effort with maintaining conduciveVerDate 11-MAY-2000 03:54 Sep 08, 2001 Jkt 073138 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\B138.XXX pfrm02 PsN: B138
14

ness to learning. Statistics involve keeping both discipline and criminal incident

data and using the information reflected by them in safe school planning efforts.

Surveys introduce qualitative data into the picture with direction given that input

from all major stakeholders (parents, students, and school staff) be collected and

made part of the assessment. And student involvement takes student input to the

next level by highlighting that students be given opportunities to participate in safe

school planning, problem solving, and implementation.

The information generated by the ‘‘four S’s’’ provides understanding of the current

condition and allows for comprehensive planning based in data and knowledge to

occur. Comprehensiveness is defined by the previously mentioned prevention, intervention, and response. Prevention refers to stopping problems before they have a

chance to occur. Intervention involves having in place mechanisms to respond to incidents or to reduce the escalation of such incidents into greater problems. Response

refers to crisis response; when a crisis does occur, steps are in place to handle the

crisis, manage it, and return the school back to normal operations as quickly as reasonable.

In addition to comprehensiveness being defined in terms of prevention, intervention, and response, comprehensive is also defined by addressing the different dimensions of school safety which exist. The Center for the Prevention of School Violence

identifies these dimensions as the ‘‘Three P’s’’ of school safety: place; people; purpose. ‘‘Place’’ refers to the physical environment of the school and that safe school

plans must account for the safety and security of that environment. ‘‘People’’ refers

to the people in the school and how they relate to each other. ‘‘Purpose’’ refers to

continuing emphasis being placed upon the reason schools exist in the first place— their educational missions to teach and promote learning.

Finally, comprehensiveness is defined with reference to accounting for the reality

that school violence is not only a school problem; it is a community problem. Research indicates that one of the strongest correlations identified in this arena is that

communities and schools reflect one another. This is true in terms of both positive

and negative influences. For planning to be comprehensive, it needs to look out to

the community to understand what it offers and how it impacts the school. It needs

to reach out to the community and include community stakeholders in the planning

efforts. It needs to include community in its efforts to be prevention, intervention,

and response oriented. And it needs to incorporate links to community resources

into the implementation of safe school plans.

The implementation of safe school plans needs to be approached with attention

paid to effectiveness and ‘‘best practices.’’ Although still somewhat thin in terms of

amount, there is increasing identification of ‘‘effective’’ programs for preventing

school violence and even more identification of programs that are ‘‘promising.’’ The

Center for the Prevention of School Violence’s Safe Schools Pyramid, a model that

reflects the need for multiple strategies which address the ‘‘Three P’s’’ of school safety, is comprised of such promising strategies. These strategies are offered for schools

to consider as they work with their assessment information, address the dimensions

of place, people, and purpose, and incorporate community links and resources into

their planning.

The Pyramid highlights not only that the strategies chosen by schools for implementation need to address the ‘‘Three P’s,’’ but that these strategies should form

a comprehensive approach with each one working in concert with the others and,

in combination, enabling a school to direct efforts along a path upon which strategies facilitate and support one another. The promising strategies which comprise the

Pyramid include:

• School Resource Officers (SROs): School Resource Officers (SROs) are certified law enforcement officers who are assigned full time to schools and are

trained to perform three roles: law enforcement; law-related counseling; and law

related teaching. The number of SROs nationally is estimated at 15,000.

• Law-related education (LRE): Law-related education (LRE) refers to preparing young people to become good citizens in our democratic society. It includes emphasis being placed upon both the rights and responsibilities that

young people have as members of our communities.

• Conflict management and peer mediation: Conflict management and peer

mediation address the development of life skills which are directed at handling

conflicts. Active listening and problem solving are emphasized as students learn

these skills.

• Students Against Violence Everywhere (S.A.V.E.): Students Against Violence Everywhere (S.A.V.E.) is a student involvement nonviolence approach. It

involves the creation of student-led chapters and speaks to the increasing

amounts of research which highlight the need for avenues of student ‘‘connectedness.’’ Chapters exist in 27 states with over 60,000 student members. The

15

Center for the Prevention of School Violence serves as S.A.V.E.’s national clearinghouse. • Teen/student court: Teen and student courts communicate the message that

there are consequences when young people inappropriately behave. Teen courts

total over 600 in the country and exist as a diversion to the juvenile justice system. Student courts serve as a component of student disciplinary processes

within schools. Both are characterized by participation of youth in the court procedures which take place. • The application of crime prevention principles to physical design as well as

the application of security technology: As previously stated, attention being paid

to physical security issues, including the application of security technology, is

an emerging strategy. By doing so, the safety and security of the physical environment can be established and maintained in ways that both prevent crime

and assist in creating environments that are conductive to learning.

By implementing such a package of strategies which are selected based upon assessment and with prevention, intervention, and response in mind, schools can be

said to be prevention oriented, proactive in their efforts, and programmatic. The latter point is important as research indicates that programmatic approaches which

are characterized by staff training, materials, and evaluation are more likely to be

effective.

The point regarding programmatic approaches needs to be emphasized as it relates to one other element which must be kept in mind when thinking through implementation. That element involves the previously mentioned emerging trend or

more efforts being put into identification of best practices. Best practices implementation speaks to the employment of programs, be they identified as effective or

promising, with efforts that maximize how to best carry out the program so that

program intent and integrity are maintained and opportunity for success exists.

With best practices employed, successful outcomes and impacts are more likely to

be accomplished.

One way to move toward best practices implementation is to evaluate programs

in terms of both process and impact. This evaluation is the last step schools and

communities must take as they put forth efforts to make schools safer. Although the

last step in our discussion here, thoughts of evaluation should never be left to the

last but must be part of the planning process that takes place. When planning is

being done, the basic question of ‘‘how we will know our plan is working?’’ needs

to be asked. This question prompts thoughts toward evaluation and generating information which will tell us if what we are doing is making our schools safer.

As stated, evaluation of programs should be undertaken in terms of both process

and impact. Process relates back to best practices: how should the program be carried out? Impact refers to outputs and outcomes: what differences are the programs

making on variables that stand as valid indicators of school safety?

What is generated in the name of impact evaluation has at times been divided

as evidence versus proof. Evidence involves information that may not be the result

of rigorous methodologically sound research designs but instead often is provided by

practitioners who offer anecdotes and sometimes even statistics of what they believe

is working. Proof involves more methodologically rigorous information.

Often in this arena the difference between evidence and proof creates a divide between practitioners and researchers. What practitioners believe to be working based

upon their daily experiences in schools is often discounted by researchers, and what

researchers argue works is often difficult to understand by practitioners. Sometimes,

it is difficult to replicate as well and suffers from limited generalizability in the real

world of school bells and cafeteria duty.

These differences should not turn us away from evaluation but instead should

prompt us to bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers. Each group

needs to better understand the worlds each operates in and, in particular, each

needs to be willing to accept what each has to offer in terms of their knowledge of

what is working.

At the local level this is most true because this is where program implementation

takes place. At the state and national levels, however, this is also true because too

often the gap which has been identified precludes pursuit of strategies that may,

in fact, be able to contribute to making schools safer. That is why actions at the

state level need to be in some way centralized in the arena of school safety. The

track record of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence as a primary point

of contact for concerns about school violence speaks to how such a primary point

of contact can assist local efforts, coordinate state initiatives, and provide services

across the nation. For seven years, the Center has served as a bridge for cooperation

between stakeholders and has enabled stakeholders to approach school safety and

youth violence with comprehensive effort and understanding.

16

The Center’s mission to foster cooperation between and among government agencies at the state and local level, to offer information and skill building opportunities

for planning, research, and evaluation efforts, and to provide information and program technical assistance to practitioners sheds light on the areas which are in

need of enhancement of capacity at the local level. The services and supports offered

by the Center are driven by needs which have been articulated by those who work

to make schools safer on a daily basis.

These needs are what must be addressed with federal actions. Some recommendations for these actions include providing leadership and direction which is grounded

in national assessment, comprehensive planning, implementation, and evaluation.

Enhancing the capacities of states to serve as primary points of contact is crucial

and, key to success in this regard, is to enable successful primary points of contact

such as the Center for the Prevention of School Violence to serve as models for others to emulate. Finally, closing the gap between practice and research must be pursued. Bridging this gap by acknowledging the importance of both will in due course

assist practitioners in their efforts to make their schools safer.

Ultimately these practitioners are the individuals who will make the Center’s vision that ‘‘Every student will attend a school that is safe and secure, one that is

free of fear and conducive to learning’’ a reality in school buildings across the nation. Every student deserves to go to school with no concerns about safety and security. There should be no fear in their hearts and minds, nor in the hearts and minds

of their parents, when students enter the school-house door. And the sounds of ringing school bells should signal that learning is about to take place in an environment

which is safe, secure, and conducive to fostering educational excellence and success.

Senator BIDEN. There are a few more people I would like to introduce. Major Joe Bryant is here from the Newcastle County Police and Captain Debbie Rees and other DARE officers are here, as

well, and Mary Ann Pry, the Delaware State Education Association

President is here, as well as Dr. Nick Fisher, the Superintendent

of Christina School District. As others come in, I will introduce

them.

By the way, I do not want to intimidate you to have to do this

because it is not going to go long, but any of the legislators who

wish to come up and sit up here and ask questions, as well, please

come up and join me. You can come up now or when the questions

start, any time you want to do it.

Jon.

STATEMENT OF JON YEAKEY, COORDINATOR, NATIONAL

RESOURCE CENTER FOR SAFE SCHOOLS

Mr. YEAKEY. Senator Biden, I would like to thank you for this

opportunity to speak with you today and with the members that we

have joining us today. It is a sincere pleasure of mine to take part

in this hearing and have a chance to share with you perspectives

on youth violence.

I think that two of the greatest problems we have right now are

misconceptions going on in this country. One of them you touched

on, and that was that youth violence is rampant in our schools and

our schools are not safe, and that is just not accurate and not true,

and that is something I think we have to continue to combat with

our parents and our community so that they feel more comfortable

and that schools are being responsive to the needs of their kids and

their families.

I think one of the other problems that we are facing in the wake

of the tragedies that occurred in Littleton, CO, and Springfield,

OR, and other places is that many States are mandating and legislating schools to develop school safety plans and the essence of

these plans are not prevention or comprehensively focused but they

17

are crisis response plans, in essence, and the terminology we are

using is a safe school plan and so schools believe that if by devising

a crisis response plan per se they have insulated themselves from

having an event occur at their schools, and that is a real unfortunate misconception that schools have right now.

Crisis response plans do not prevent random acts of violence like

what occurred in Littleton. They are a response to what could happen if something happened. It is a way to respond and salvage your

school and community and your children and provide the greatest

support for them in the aftermath, but they do not prevent anything.

I think what the National Resource Center for Safe Schools’ greatest mission right now is to develop schools’ understanding of

what comprehensive safe school strategy is. Safe school planning is

a process. It is not a one-time thing. It is not an event that you

do. It is not a one-time plan that you put together and it goes on

a shelf like many crisis response plans have been over the past decade. Safe school planning is a process. It is a process that starts

by schools connecting with community groups and community organizations and agencies and families that support their school and

support the issue of youth violence and trying to eliminate it.

For years, schools have looked at school violence as if it is an

issue that they themselves have to try and tackle. It is not. Youth

violence does not exist within a vacuum within the four walls of a

school. It is something that occurs in our community at large and

it is something that finds its ways into our hallways.

What we need to do, as Pam talked about, is that we need to connect with local law enforcement agencies and community mental

health and we need to get statistics and information from them of

what is going on in the community at large. We need to gather information from both the community and our school district and

look at what the issues are that are facing our kids. We need to

make valuable partnerships with those groups. Schools are not in

this alone. They are not going to be successful at lessening youth

violence without partnering with local law enforcement and community mental health to support kids throughout this process and

provide the prevention/intervention strategies that Dr. Riley talked

about earlier.

I think by building those partnerships, we are going to be better

able to address the needs of our students and our families, but

most importantly, within developing these partnerships we have to

develop the most important partnerships and those are with the

youth of our schools. For years, we have bypassed the youth of our

schools as being the kids that we needed to talk to and not hear

from.

Kids, as Dr. Riley talked about, as you talked about, Senator

Biden, are our most valuable source of information, our most valuable resources we could possibly have, and we have to treat them

that way. Instead of acting to them and giving them directives and

telling them what they need to do, we need to be seeking out information from them and we need to make sure we are doing it in

a way that provides for their safety.

Senator BIDEN. Jon, talk like a student. Tell me what the hell

that means.

18

Mr. YEAKEY. What we need to do is we need to talk to kids.

Senator BIDEN. But give me an example of how that works.

Mr. YEAKEY. We need to find ways for kids to share information

with us, anonymous surveys, tip lines, more people in schools for

kids to be able to connect to and talk to and give us information,

because kids have it. They know what is going on in their school

and we need to provide opportunities for them to share it with us

and make sure that they know that they are not going to get in

trouble for telling us. They are not going to have repercussions

from bullies in the school or from kids that they tell on or kids that

they share with. Kids need to talk to us about those things and we

need to provide the avenues for them to do so. I think by involving

them in the process, we will get a much better handle on what is

going on in our schools because they know much better than oftentimes we do.

I think part of this process, after developing those partnerships

and involving those people in this process, is to do some of the

things that Dr. Riley talked about and that is do a needs assessment. Many of our schools are reacting on gut instinct right now.

They are simply looking at problems that they perceive are in the

school without having any real data on it. Somebody says, we have

a gang problem, and they automatically want to go grab a gang

prevention curriculum and stick it in the school without any real

evaluation or understanding of whether they have a gang problem

or the culture or nature of the gang they may have.

I had a school district in California who could not understand

why a proven resource-based gang prevention program was not

working for their school. They took it off of a shelf. They looked

into it. They thought it was a great program. They instituted it in

their school only to find out that it was a gang program that was

aimed at African-American youth and African-American gangs and

they had an Hispanic gang problem. Those gang cultures are very,

very different, and what one program may work for one group of

kids may not for others and we need to be thoughtful about that.

Instead of schools reacting on gut instinct, we need to make sure

we look at our priorities and look at the things that are happening

in our school and address those things appropriately.

After doing those assessments and we know what our problems

are, we need to take research-based approaches to be successful.

We do not need to grab at straws. Schools right now are being inundated by snake oil salesmen, people telling them that this will

work, buy this program, institute this, without any real research

to back it up. And when asked, well, who researched it, where did

you find the statistics, they said, well, we researched it. It is real

convenient when people selling their program have done their own

research to show that it has been beneficial.

There are groups out there, such as the Center for the Study and

Prevention of Violence in Colorado, Hamilton Fish Institute in

Washington, D.C., that are doing the research on programs to let

you know what is effective and what worked and we have got to

get that information to schools so that they are not grabbing at

straws.

I think after that, schools need to look at all the essential components of school safety and violence prevention, their school policies.

19

What are they doing right that is supporting their schools and

what are they not doing? What are their school policies around discipline, around involving their school resource officers? School resource officers should be much more than an intimidator at a

school. They do not need to be there solely as a person to walk

around and scare kids into being good. School resource officers are

another caring adult to have at our school. We need to utilize them

that way. We need to get them in classrooms, provide them opportunities to make connections with kids so that kids will open up

and share with them and talk to them in meaningful ways.

And finally, schools need to look at evaluating this process and

they need help doing so. Senator Biden, I think one of the biggest

problems that schools face right now is they do not have the resources to do this process or to support this process and a lot of

them do not have the expertise to do it. There are at this point 14

State school safety centers around this country in States that have

mandated and developed a training and technical assistance center

to assist schools in doing this process.

Schools do not have evaluators oftentimes on staff that know how

to evaluate programs. They are not great statistic gatherers. They

take statistics but they do not organize them oftentimes effectively.

Schools need help in doing this process, and if they do not have a

State school safety center or some entity within their State to assist them, then they have to fall back on our center as a national

center to try and support them in this process, and that is very difficult because there is only limited resources for all those school

districts that need this help.

But school districts right now that are being the most successful

are finding ways to partner with centers that are working to reduce

youth violence, universities of higher education that help support

this process and are using this as a way to help schools and support them, or by looking for national support through Federal agencies such as our own. So with that—— Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Yeakey follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JON M. YEAKEY ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL RESOURCE

CENTER FOR SAFE SCHOOLS

ABOUT THE NATIONAL RESOURCE CENTER FOR SAFE SCHOOLS

The National Resource Center for Safe Schools is operated by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory through a cooperative agreement with two federal

agencies: the United States Department of Justice through its Office of Juvenile

Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the United States Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools Program. The Center is located in

Portland, Oregon. The mission of the National Resource Center for Safe Schools

(NRCSS) is to provide training, technical assistance, resources and information on

school safety and violence prevention to school districts, law enforcement agencies,

community organizations, state and local agencies working on reducing youth violence and creating safe schools. The Center operates a lending library with resources and information relating to school safety planning and essential components

for safe schools. The Center’s Webpage (www.safetyzone.org) contains a database on

effective school-based and community programs for violence prevention.

The National Resource Center for Safe Schools has developed multiple approaches

to providing training and technical assistance to states and local school districts.

The center is conducting several regional training conferences aimed at developing

capacity at state and local levels. These regional training’s provide information and

resources to educators from a seven-state region. Invitees include school personnel,

local juvenile justice specialists, community mental health providers and state level

20

agencies. The purpose of these conferences is to encourage school/community partnerships and to facilitate the development of local comprehensive safe school plans.

The National Resource Center for Safe Schools is also working with several state

educational agencies to identify high need school districts that desire to implement

comprehensive safe school plans. Identified districts are required to bring teams to

the training that include representatives from schools, juvenile justice, law enforcement, and community service agencies, especially community mental health and

other agencies serving youth. Center staff train these teams using curriculum developed by NRCSS, Creating Safe Schools: A Comprehensive Approach.

The National Resource Center for Safe Schools is working with state and local

educational agencies to share current information and resources on school safety

such as: school safety assessment instruments: guiding principles on effective safe

school planning; researched based programs in violence prevention; and evaluation

resources to monitor and adjust safe school programs.

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO SCHOOL SAFETY

The National Resource Center for Safe Schools believes that developing safe and

effective schools cannot be accomplished simply through the installation of metal detectors, security cameras, or a ‘‘feel good’’ curriculum program aimed solely at raising children’s self-esteem. Rather, schools must recognize that school safety must be

planned and coordinated carefully with the stakeholders in the school and community who have an interest in eliminating youth violence and creating safe schools.

In the aftermath of recent horrific events schools are anxious to adopt quick-fix solutions in an effort to appear responsive to parent and student concerns that their

school may not be safe. Some of these quick fixes include spending important resource dollars on metal detectors, surveillance cameras, or a curriculum. Often this

is done without knowledge of the research to help guide them in determining the

effectiveness of their actions in reducing youth violence. In some cases such actions

can actually be harmful to our youth and detrimental to a school’s efforts to reduce

violence.

School safety cannot be instituted on a short-term time frame and then forgotten.

In conjunction with essential partners schools must develop a schoolwide environment that meets the safety and security concerns of all children, their families, and

school personnel.

This process begins with a school administration that understands the critical

connection between providing for a safe and secure learning environment and overall student learning and achievement. To effect change and to alter an unsafe and

uninviting school environment, school administrators must be committed to the success of all students. While statistics show that schools are by far the safest place

for our youth unfortunately many of our students attend schools where threats, bullying, intimidation and acts of violence are commonplace. Seen from this perspective

such schools are a haven for psychological and emotional damage for children and

youth. Left unaddressed these problems provide the foundation for future and possibly more serious acts of violence.

Through the media the public has become aware of what happens to children and

youth who are ostracized, intimidated, and ridiculed. The examples provided by the

events in Littleton, Colorado, Springfield, Oregon and Jonesboro, Arkansas lends

credence to the idea that the perpetrators acted out their violence after prolonged

experiences of teasing, bullying, and feeling disenfranchised not only in the schools

but also in the communities in which they lived. Therefore educators must understand the critical impact that school environment can have on young people. An essential mission for all schools is that there will be high and positive expectations

for every child and youth. Similarly the school must demonstrate that every child

is valued and that every child can be successful with the proper support and encouragement.

In order to accomplish this mission schools must develop the critical collaborative

relationships with community agencies that can assist and support them in the

process of creating a safe school. For years some schools have viewed the issue of

school safety as an expectation placed solely on their shoulders. Because schools

cannot operate in isolation, schools need the meaningful involvement of students

and parents along with the school/community partners where information about the

conditions at the school and in the community are exchanged openly and solutions

to school and community youth violence are determined collectively.

Students are often very much aware of critical information regarding their peers.

Unfortunately because adults tend to speak down to youth instead of seeking out

their knowledge and allowing youth to play a critical part in making our schools

safe we miss an opportunity to involve the students in a meaningful way. By acting

21

as mentors and peer mediators for other students experiencing problems in the

school and community students can also become active role models for appropriate

behavior and for helping to foster the skills other youth will need in resolving conflict and managing anger. We must also solicit the involvement of families as active

participants in supporting school safety measures.

Youth violence is not solely a school issue. Once effective community collaboration

has been established, schools and other stakeholders within the community must

gather data collectively through a comprehensive needs assessment to make informed decisions about the risk factors that they want to target and to institute systemic changes in their school. A school must look at information from a broader perspective than simply what is occurring within its four walls. The effort to reduce

youth violence requires a clear understanding of both risk and protective factors

that persist in our schools and communities. Schools must gather and organize data

on both risk and protective factors that allows them to gain an accurate picture of

what is occurring both in their school and in the community at large. Examples of

such data include, but are not limited to, the following: • School discipline referrals and expulsions; • Student reports of weapons and safety concerns; • Student and parent involvement in school and community activities; • School calls to local law enforcement; • Schools policies and parents’ and students’ perception of their effectiveness

and enforcement; • Dropout and truancy statistics; • Drug and alcohol statistics; • Homeless statistics; • Juvenile justice statistics in the community; • Community health and mental health statistics; • Hospital statistics for the numbers of emergency room visits by children

and youth.

This data should be organized into a school-community profile that presents the

information on both graphic and narrative formats. This profile can then be used

to analyze and prioritize the various issues facing the schools and youth at school

and in the community. Only by educating the various stakeholders in this process

will they be able to develop a common understanding of what is affecting the youth

at school and in the community. Too often schools are perceived as being indifferent

to the needs of the students or the concerns of parents. Only by sharing the information and decision making that goes into the safe school planning process will

schools be successful in changing the climate and environment of their school to create a school that is safe and responsive to all students.

The essential components of a safe school plan include: • A nurturing and caring school climate;

• Attention to safety of the school facility;

• Supportive school policies;

• Crisis Response plans;

• Schoolwide behavior codes;

• Identification and referral of students with special needs;

• Staff development;

• High academic expectations with supportive instruction;

• High expectations for behavior and student conduct;

• School-community partnerships integrated into the school environment;

• Open communication regarding safety issues;

• Schoolwide programs aimed at prevention, targeted intervention and intensive interventions.

Goals and objectives designed by the school-community-based team must be data

driven and avoid the pitfall of making decisions and committing resources based on

intuition and gut reactions.

Recently a great deal of energy has gone into identifying and researching violence

prevention programs for effectiveness. The research has shown that while some programs have been proven effective at reducing violence, others have actually been

shown to be ineffective or even harmful to youth. Schools must carefully select programs that have been evaluated on their ability to reduce violence or other mediating factors. Several groups have done exceptional work in identifying and evaluating programs. The Hamilton-Fish Institute has identified twelve programs that reduce violence and have shown to be effective over a year time span. Additionally,

these programs have shown they can be replicated in more than one location. These

programs include:

• Anger Coping Program;

• Brain Power Program;

22

• First Steps to Success; • Good Behavior Game; • I Can Problem Solve; • Kid Power; • Metropolitan Area Child Study; • Peer Mediation Program; • Positive Adolescent Choices Training; • Teaching Students to be Peace Makers; • Think First; • Violence Prevention Curriculum for Adolescence.

A more detailed description of these programs can be found at the Hamilton-Fish

website: www.ham-fish.org.

In addition the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence has reviewed

multiple programs and selected ten they have evaluated and identified as Blueprint

Programs as effective in preventing violence. These programs include: • Midwestern Prevention Program; • Multi-systemic Therapy; • Big Brothers Big Sisters; • Nurse Home Visitations; • Functional Family Therapy; • Treatment Foster Care; • Quantum Opportunities; • Bullying Prevention Program; • Life Skills Training; • Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS).

A more detailed description of these programs can be found at the Center for the

Study and Prevention of Violence website: http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/.

As school-community partnerships craft their plans it is critical that schools, families and local agencies understand the school and community policies and procedures that will be instituted to support a safe school environment. Too often schools

and communities have misunderstandings about how various agencies will respond

and why. Seamless services must be provided to protect and support youth through

transitions from one grade to the next, from alternative educational settings or to

the juvenile justice system. Parents and collaborating agencies must understand

how one another operate and how those actions can best support the youth of the

community. Schools must review the discipline policies and behavioral expectations

of both youth and staff members so that high behavioral and social expectations are

maintained and all members of the school community are treated equally and fairly

with appropriate respect and consideration.

School facilities have received a great deal of focus following the multiple shootings that have occurred in recent years. While this is an essential component of a

comprehensive approach, it remains only one piece of a very important whole.

Schools may not have the financial resources to significantly alter their school facility. Therefore it is essential that schools conduct a facilities audit and evaluate the

safety considerations evident and unique to their facility. Instruments for facilities

assessment are available through NRCSS and also from the Georgia Emergency

Management Agency.

School-community-based teams should review the principles presented in the document ‘‘Early Warning, Timely Response’’ and ‘‘Safeguarding Our Children: An Action Guide.’’ These two documents have been developed through the collaboration

of the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Education. Both of these

documents are available through the NRCSS website at www.safetyzone.org or

through the Department of Education at www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html. These two

documents outline the need and process for schools to implement prevention, targeted intervention, and intensive intervention programs to support all youth in the

school community. Additionally, these documents outline how to identify early warning signs and use these signs appropriately so as to not label or stigmatize children.

These signs should be considered within the context of where they manifest themselves and used only to assist in providing necessary support and interventions for

youth.

Many schools have recognized the tremendous benefit of the school resource officer (SRO) on the entire school community. The role of a school resource officer varies greatly from state to state and from district to district. Schools often fail to realize the depth of involvement an SRO can have at a school. While many schools simply utilize their SRO as a law enforcer or to provide an authoritative presence, other

schools are using these individuals in the classroom and in a variety of activities

throughout the day. Schools that understand the need to provide many opportunities for their students to develop relationships with caring adults use these officers

23

as another link to young people. Law enforcement agencies have experienced the

benefit of having officers at the school and building relationships with young people

that allows the police to better understand what is happening with youth in the

community. Having law enforcement agencies and school districts design clear expectations for the role of the SRO and providing the necessary training to support

the officer are crucial to successfully implementing an SRO program for the school.

Recently technology and the role it can take in creating safer schools has become

important. Software now exists that allows schools to track incidents, discipline referrals, and to organize these data for reporting to state and federal authorities.

The use of tip lines and web access for students to report concerns anonymously

allows students to share information without the fear of reprisals or being labeled

as a snitch. A range of technological resources are available and include everything

from key-card entry systems to security cameras and metal detectors. What schools

must consider is selecting the least obtrusive use of these technologies so our schools

remain encouraging and inviting places for our students to learn.

In the aftermath of the school shootings that have galvanized our society and

brought youth violence and school safety to the forefront of the political spectrum,

many school districts and state legislatures have mistakenly viewed the development of crisis response plans as safe school plans. This misconception is widespread

and it is dangerous. Many schools believe that by developing crisis response plans

they have insulated themselves from incurring such an event. The fact is that a crisis response plan, while being a critical component of a comprehensive approach,

does little to prevent such acts of violence. Rather, these plans ensure the coordinated response of the multiple agencies that will respond in the event of a crisis.

Schools must work with local responders to plan for and practice the coordinated

response necessary in the event of an emergency. Coordinating response procedures

and protocols with local law enforcement, emergency management agencies, mental

health providers, and families is essential to reducing the impact of a catastrophic

event on youth and families.

Finally, the importance of evaluation cannot be understated. Evaluation is a process that must be intricately connected to the needs assessment a school conducts

in order that baseline data be compared from prior to this process through implementation and then used to revise and alter plans as necessary.

Schools for years have simply implemented programs to address various concerns

and assume that a positive effect has occurred. If schools desire to prevent youth

violence and truly meet the needs of all children, schools must take a more aggressive and thoughtful approach to evaluating what impact they are having on the

youth and families they are serving.

EFFECTIVE STATE APPROACHES TO REDUCING YOUTH VIOLENCE

Several states have taken proactive approaches to supporting schools working to

reduce youth violence. Many state legislatures are mandating that schools develop

safe school plans, including requirements that such plans go beyond simply developing crisis response plans that do little to prevent violence. States that understand

the complexity of youth violence and the necessary steps required by schools to address such issues are designing legislation that requires collaboration among various state and community agencies and details expectations for school districts to

gather data and base decisions on data driven information. Additionally, states that

have recognized the complexity of these issues have designed legislation that allows

for the formation of a state school safety center.

These centers support school districts in the gathering and ordering of data, the

development of school safety plans, and the training and technical assistance necessary to implement such plans successfully. Approximately fourteen states have

provided funding for state school safety centers to assist school districts in the planning and implementation of comprehensive safe school plans.

States that are working effectively to reduce school violence understand the need

for schools to work beyond the development of crisis response plans and focus on

the development of primary prevention plans that start in kindergarten and are reinforced across grade levels. These plans support the development of social skills

that include conflict resolution, anger management, and the development of mutual

respect among young people and adults. These plans also include the necessary targeted interventions and intensive interventions required by youth who exhibit the

need for additional support.

In conclusion, states that are working effectively to reduce youth violence understand the need to provide schools with technical assistance necessary to develop successful prevention and intervention strategies. Therefore, states are finding it necVerDate 11-MAY-2000 03:54 Sep 08, 2001 Jkt 073138 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\B138.XXX pfrm02 PsN: B138
24

essary to fund state training and technical assistance centers to support schools in

developing school safety plans.

The fact remains, that while approximately fourteen states have state school safety centers, designed to provide the necessary training and technical assistance to

districts working to prevent youth violence; thirty-six states remain isolated and dependent on the National Resource Center for Safe Schools and other organizations

that have created school safety initiatives and resources. More states need to recognize the need of their local districts for training and technical assistance in school

safety planning.

EFFECTIVE LOCAL EFFORTS TO REDUCE YOUTH VIOLENCE

Numerous school districts across the country understand the necessity to address

youth violence comprehensively, despite the lack of support necessary to implement

such plans effectively. Consequently, school districts are working desperately to develop school-community collaborations. Thanks to the funding made available recently through the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative some school districts

are working to involve multiple agencies in the process of safe school planning. The

fact remains that schools cannot adequately meet the needs of the youth they serve

without the support and coordination of local agencies and the technical assistance

support of either a state school safety center, a university of higher education and

the National Resource Center for Safe Schools.

25

26

27

Senator BIDEN. I have a number of questions, but I am going to

go down to Mr. Kleiman.

STATEMENT OF BRYAN KLEIMAN, PRINCIPAL, MIAMI SPRINGS

HIGH SCHOOL, ON BEHALF OF THE YOUTH CRIME WATCH

OF AMERICA

Mr. KLEIMAN. Good morning. It is nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you for being here.

Mr. KLEIMAN. It is very nice to be here. Your wife did a good job.

We have people here that have actually been out in the field and

are experiencing these things.

Kids today are as good as they have ever been, and I would tell

you perhaps better. This assertion could surprise some of my adult

contemporaries, especially in light of some recent incidents around

the country. Working closely with almost 4,000 students daily, it is

amazing what the youth of today are capable of accomplishing. Students regularly mount enormous food drives for the homeless,

clothing drives for flood victims in Central America, collect blood

for hospitals, raise money for United Way charities, volunteer in a

variety of settings, and perform thousands of hours of community

service. The youth in our communities are involved, vibrant, and

eager to participate.

I think the primary differential I see between the high school environment we as adults recall and the present are the nature of the

challenges the youth of today confront. Many of these issues did

not even exist when we were back in school. Many students today

face enormous pressures, isolation, and the lack of the support network enjoyed by previous generations.

I can tell you firsthand the quality of today’s youth is unsurpassed. I think it is our job as adults to provide the environment

conducive to their success. As you have heard from my colleagues,

a safe and secure school is an absolute prerequisite.

The primary concern of parents 10 or 20 years ago was academic

progress. I think this has been replaced by a different concern.

What I hear is, ‘‘I want my child back in the same shape they left

this morning.’’

I think an integrated approach is best. We have heard about incorporating technology training, logistics, and planning. I wanted

to tell you a little bit about the cornerstone of our success, and that

has been through the empowerment of our youth. We use a program called Youth Crime Watch. I think it is an elegant solution,

and it is an attempt to go ahead and resolve some of the issues

that our high schools especially are experiencing.

It is premised upon the principle that students will rise to meet

expectations, that if we provide them the ownership and empowerment, they will make better choices, and that students really do

want a safe and secure environment. It is a proven program that

has been exceptionally effective and it is cost neutral. Once established, it is virtually self-sustaining.

It is a student-led organization that provides avenues for participation for every student, no matter what their academic level. It

seamlessly integrates with existing violence and drug prevention

programs and provides a unified platform for their coordination.

28

At our school, we administer several drug and alcohol prevention

programs, an antitobacco initiative called Teens Against Tobacco

Use, TATU, peer mediation and counseling, a teen court, as well

as violence prevention, awareness, and education under the Youth

Crime Watch umbrella. This is in addition to the actual Youth

Crime Watch organization and the Youth Crime Watch patrol.

My own involvement with Youth Crime Watch began with my

first administrative appointment as an assistant principal back in

1990 at G. Holmes Braddock Senior High School. That is in Miami,

Florida. I was a member of the inaugural administrative team to

open the school, which soon became the largest in the country with

over 5,300 students.

Senator BIDEN. Fifty-three-hundred in one school?

Mr. KLEIMAN. Yes; it soon became apparent that far too many

students were gang and drug involved and that we needed a mechanism for proactivity rather than reaction.

After identifying a student with leadership abilities, we established a core group which was then trained in the Youth Crime

Watch principles. The national office of Youth Crime Watch of

America lent us support and provided start-up materials, manuals,

information, and sent a consultant out to meet with the students

and the staff and myself. The students elected their officers and

their board members. Again, it is important to note this is a youth

empowerment program. They elect their own officers. They pretty

much set their own agenda, to a large extent.

Senator BIDEN. For clarification, you started this in a single high

school and you went from there, or was there already—— Mr. KLEIMAN. There have been schools all over the country. I am

just giving you my experience.

Senator BIDEN. Got you. No, that is what I was trying to figure

out.

Mr. KLEIMAN. And I think, to me, that was important that you

know I have been through this.

Senator BIDEN. Yes, that is important. I just want to make sure

I understand.

Mr. KLEIMAN. But they elect their own officers and board members, like some clubs do. An extended core group after that was

formed and students were recruited to form what we call the Challenger Patrol. Staff was in-serviced at faculty meetings and students were informed through a variety of outlets. We had a school

newspaper, a school TV station, and pep rallies.

All facets of the school interface with the program. The school resource officer provided training and advice, especially in regard to

the patrol. The student services department provided training in

peer mediation as well as referrals into the program. The activities

director provided guidance in establishing procedures and protocol

and soon had a symbiotic relationship between the program and

the existing clubs.

The initial administrative cost was really minimal. It involved

the purchase of radios, jackets, and some T-shirts. This seed money

from that point forward was pretty much self-sustaining. To this

day, they are doing their own fundraising.

The patrol was trained and organized and immediately began to

pay dividends beyond my wildest and boldest expectations.

29

Equipped with radios and deployed throughout the building, their

effect was immediate. Teachers and students were both gratified to

see the faculty and student parking lots better patrolled. The security monitors that we had, always in very short supply, were more

effective and their span of control increased, as well as their range

of operation. Maintenance and custodial services experienced a virtual rebirth as they were not devoting the bulk of their resources

to graffiti eradication and vandalism.

Student and teacher spirit and morale rose markedly as pride in

the building, the school, and the facility returned. Crime Watch

even held its own pep rallies and over 95 percent took the

anticrime and drug-free pledge.

About the same time as we had the increased patrol activity, we

had some positive budget outcomes which we really had not forecast. Fewer part-time security hours were necessary, which saved

money not only in the school-based budgeting but also saved money

in internal funds that the clubs were raising for themselves. The

patrols would return and facilitate evening events, both for the

school, for example, Senior Night, as well as club events where

sponsors found the patrols and effective way to reduce expenditures.

It had an academic impact, as well. In order to feed 5,300 students, it was necessary to schedule three lunches, each of approximately 1,750 students. Lunch periods began at 10:40 a.m. in the

morning and ended at 1:25 p.m. So you had 3,500 students in class

while another 1,750 were eating for several hours. This necessitated sequestering the 1,750 students and isolating them from

the other 3,500. Those 3,500 deserve an environment conducive to

learning. Any teacher will tell you that, and any kid can tell you

that.

Previously, this had been an almost insurmountable task because

of the number of security monitors available, but once we had the

patrols on board, it became the norm. Teachers and students were

both extremely appreciative, and it should be noted that at my

present school, with almost 4,000 students, we were able to convert

to a closed campus lunch situation as well as feed all the students

in a single extended lunch period. That has a lot of advantages.

This would not have been possible without the aid of our patrols

that are out there every day working lunch. The nice thing with

one lunch period is you do not have the issues anymore of, well,

I want to cut and go to the other lunch to be with my boyfriend

or girlfriend. Closing the campus obviously was a major safety

item. The local police, the community, the mayor, everybody is

much happier, and the kids are much happier.

As an operational issue, the decrease in all types of incidences

was astonishing. I, myself, when the data came back from our management information systems, did not believe it and told them they

had better run it again. The mere presence of those patrols, the

extra eyes and ears, obviated a lot of behavior. In addition, the

Youth Crime Watch program began to yield a great deal of advance

warning. By having a representative cross-section of the student

body, every student in the school knew somebody in the program.

Quite often, security and administration would be there at the

stairwell before the participants for the scheduled fight arrived, or

30

the Youth Crime Watch peer mediators or counselors had already

intervened and there was no fight.

One of the more, I think, remarkable corollary effects of the program has been in advancing equity and access and dropout prevention. Every school has its star athletes, its musicians, their academic achievers, and they garner a lot of recognition and awards

and attention. What I like most about this program is it provides

a vehicle for all students, exclusive of any extraordinary talent or

skill. All you need for entry into the program is a desire to improve

your school and your own environment.

Senator BIDEN. Sorry to interrupt you.

Mr. KLEIMAN. Sure.

Senator BIDEN. Could you give us a sense, in a school of 7,000,

in a school of 4,000, how many students are on this safety patrol

or whatever you call it? How many students are in this group?

Mr. KLEIMAN. The patrol, probably 130.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you.

Mr. KLEIMAN. The extended core group, probably closer to 350,

and the overall—— Senator BIDEN. A cadre of 350, at any one time 130 are what you

would need?

Mr. KLEIMAN. Not all patrol. There is a waiting list for that.

Senator BIDEN. Got you.

Mr. KLEIMAN. And for the Crime Watch itself, we have over

3,600. And again, I think the star athlete, the artist, the musician,

the kids involved in all sorts of different things, they get a lot of

that recognition. What we have found over the years has been that

a lot of our ESE students, our Exceptional Student Education students, and our ESOL students, English for Speakers of Other Languages, a lot of kids that did not have an avenue for a lot of participation now find an identity and have really blossomed through

their association with the program, because they just want to be

a good citizen and want to make their school better and that is all

it requires. So it gives them a real means to contribute. I have had

several former gang members not only contribute but ascend to

leadership positions. I personally think it is an outstanding program.

Our success at Braddock was meteoric. The school was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice with a National Safe and Drug Free Recognition

Award. Miami Springs Senior High, after only two years, was

named a National Model Safe School. So we know the program

works.

It is an integral part, though, I would add, as they have already

said, it is an integral part of a comprehensive approach, but it does

serve to enhance the other facets. At the school I am at now, we

have added technology in the form of surveillance cameras and

computer encoded identification badges. In addition, we have secured the perimeter of the facility.

Senator BIDEN. Every student has an ID badge?

Mr. KLEIMAN. Every one. We can even take attendance with

them and print out tardy passes and all sorts of things, which we

do.

Mr. SPENCE. Sir, may I just interrupt you for a second?

31

Mr. KLEIMAN. Yes.

Mr. SPENCE. When you talk about surveillance cameras, how are

they utilized, on the perimeter, inside the school? Are they used in

the classroom?

Mr. KLEIMAN. Not in the classrooms, no. We now have 43 cameras active. We have every stairwell, every hallway, every approach

to the building.

Mr. SPENCE. I just wondered why—Senator, I do not mean to interrupt you—— Senator BIDEN. No, go ahead.

Mr. SPENCE [continuing]. Because we have got probably the finest teachers in the country right here in Delaware, but when an

activity starts within the classroom, a disruption or whatever, we

utilize video cameras on the buses, which have been very, very

helpful to identify the bullies on the school buses. Unfortunately,

we do not have enough cameras on the school buses. I think kids

are pretty smart to know that some of the school buses have them,

some do not.

But I always wondered why a video camera would not be utilized

in a classroom if, in fact, say a teacher identifies a student who is

a continual problem in the classroom, as we do on the school bus.

If there is a bully on the school bus, we utilize a video camera, and

if an incident occurs, you can utilize this. It has been used in court

to identify some kids that started trouble on school buses. I always

wondered why we could not work with the school teachers at their

okay or approval to utilize in a classroom to identify a student

whose parent says, ‘‘Not my Johnny or Mary. They would not do

that.’’ I always wondered why.

Mr. KLEIMAN. You know, it is interesting. I have never actually

had that. We have 200-and-something teachers and not one of

them has ever asked for that. We have the capability to do that.

Mr. SPENCE. Just recognizing a kid in a classroom continuing

disturbing a class—— Mr. KLEIMAN. I think, administratively—I will speak for myself

on this, but I think, administratively, we have some outstanding

people all over the country and certainly here. Programs do not

teach kids, teachers teach kids and they need to be supported. So

my teachers do not need a camera, they just need to talk to us and

let us know and we will intervene.

Senator BIDEN. One more follow-up on this subject and then we

will let you finish, and then we will come back and ask everybody

questions.

Ms. CONNOR. On the surveillance cameras, what kind of a tech

center do you have that mans that? Are they on during school

hours and is there a person that is there and is it a flip button——

Mr. KLEIMAN. I have a security person that sits with the

cameras——

Ms. CONNOR. In addition to the resource officer? Do you have one

of those in your building also?

Mr. KLEIMAN. Yes; the resource officer, I would not waste their

time watching cameras.

Ms. CONNOR. You bet. Thank you.

Mr. KLEIMAN. They need to be with the kids. But no, I have

somebody that monitors the cameras and whenever they spot someVerDate 11-MAY-2000 03:54 Sep 08, 2001 Jkt 073138 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B138.XXX pfrm02 PsN: B138
32

thing, they hit—it is a one-button zoom and they get on the radio

and that is how we work it.

Ms. CONNOR. OK; thank you.

Mr. KLEIMAN. The last thing I will just mention is I think you

have to take an integrated approach. All the measures that we

have talked about become exponentially more effective when they

are coordinated with a high visibility, high awareness, active administration, a committed, involved faculty. The administration

must set the tone and actively support safety and security and promote vigilance among all staff. In our case, our business partners

and our PTSA play an active role both with our Crime Watch and

the operation of the school and they contribute financially to our

efforts.

A safe school starts always with the principal and extends from

the administration to the staff. It involves the community and

should reach out to every student. I think only through a collaborative effort of all the parties involved and mutual support, then

the sum will be greater than the part.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kleiman follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BRYAN KLEIMAN

‘‘Kids today are as good as they have ever been, perhaps better!’’ this assertion

may surprise a number of my adult contemporaries, especially in light of some recent incidents around the country. Working closely withal most 4,000 students daily,

it is amazing what the youth of today are capable of accomplishing. Students regularly mount enormous food drives for the homeless, clothing drives for flood victims

in Central America, collect blood for hospitals, raise money for United Way charities, volunteer in veteran’s hospitals and nursing homes, and unceasingly spend

time performing a myriad of community service. The youth in our communities are

involved, vibrant, and eager to participate. The primary differential between the

high school environment we as adults recall and the present is the nature of the

challenges the youth of today confront. Many of these issues, such as H.I.V., did not

even exist when we were in school. Many students today face enormous pressures,

isolation, and lack of the support network mechanisms enjoyed by previous generations. I can tell you firsthand that the quality of today’s youth is unsurpassed; it

is our job as adults to provide an environment conducive to success. A safe and secure school is an absolute prerequisite. The primary concern of parents 20 years ago

was academic progress; this has been replaced by a different concern—I want my

child back in the same shape they left this morning. An integrated approach is best,

incorporating technology, training, logistics, and planning. The cornerstone of our

success, however, has been accomplished through the empowerment of our youth

through a program known as Youth Crime Watch. It is truly an elegant solution.

Youth Crime Watch is premised upon the principal that students will rise to meet

expectations, that provided ownership and empowerment they will make better

choices, and that students want a safe and secure environment. It is a proven program that has been exceptionally effective, and is cost neutral. Once established it

is virtually self-sustaining.

Youth Crime Watch is a student led organization that provides avenues for participation for every student, no matter what their academic level. It seamlessly integrates with existing violence and drug prevention programs, and provides a unified

platform for their coordination. At our school we administer several drug and alcohol prevention programs, an anti-tobacco initiative, peer mediation and counseling,

a teen court, as well as violence prevention awareness and education under the

Youth Crime Watch umbrella. This is in addition to the actual Youth Crime Watch

organization and Youth Crime Watch Patrol.

My involvement with Youth Crime Watch began with my first administrative appointment as an assistant principal in 1990 at G. Holmes Braddock High School in

Miami, Florida. I was a member of the inaugural administrative team to open the

school, which soon became the largest in the country with over 5,300 students. It

soon became apparent that far too many students were gang and drug involved, and

that a mechanism for proactivity rather than reaction was necessary. After identiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 03:54 Sep 08, 2001 Jkt 073138 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\B138.XXX pfrm02 PsN: B138
33

fying a student with leadership abilities we established a ‘‘core group’’ which was

trained in Youth Crime Watch principles. Youth Crime Watch of America lent outstanding support, providing excellent start-up materials, manuals, and information

as well as sending a consultant to meet with the students and staff. The students

elected their officers and board members; an extended core group was formed with

students recruited to form a Youth Crime Watch ‘‘Challenger Patrol.’’ Staff was

inserviced at faculty meetings and students informed through a variety of outlets,

including the school TV station, announcements, the school paper, and pep rallies.

All facets of the school interfaced with the program. The school resource officer provided training and advice, especially in regard to the Patrol. The student services

department provided training in peer mediation as well as referrals into the program. The activities director provided guidance in establishing procedures and protocol, and soon formed a symbiotic relationship between the program and existing

clubs. The initial administrative cost was minimal, and involved the purchase of radios, jackets, and shirts. This was seed money, the unit from that point forward was

self-sustaining. The Patrol was trained and organized, and immediately began to

pay dividends beyond our wildest expectations. Equipped with radios and deployed

throughout the building, their effect was immediate. Teachers and students were

both gratified to see the facility and student parking lots patrolled. Security monitors, always in short supply, were more effective as their span of control increased,

as well as their range of operation. Maintenance and custodial services experienced

almost a rebirth, as they were not devoting the bulk of their resources in graffiti

eradication and vandalism. Student and teacher spirit and morale rose markedly as

pride in the building, school, and facility returned; Crime Watch even held its own

pep rallies, and over 95% took the anti-crime and drug-free pledge. Concomitant

with the increased Patrol activity came positive budget outcomes, fewer part-time

security hours were necessary, which not only saved money in the school based

budgeting system, but also saved money regarding internal funds. Patrols would return and facilitate evening events both for the school, for example Senator Night,

as well as club events, where sponsors found the patrols effective and a way to reduce expenditures. The patrols had an academic impact as well; in order to feed

5,300 students it was necessary to schedule three lunches of approximately 1,750

students. Lunch periods began at 10:40 a.m. and ended at 1:25 p.m., with 3,500 students in class while the other 1,750 were eating. This necessitated sequestering the

1,750 students, isolating them from the 3,500 students that required an environment conducive to learning. This had previously been an almost insurmountable

task, with the advent of the patrols it became the norm. Teachers and students were

both extremely appreciative. It should be noted that at my present school with almost 4,000 students, we were able to convert to a closed campus lunch program as

well as feed all the students in a single extended lunch period. This would not have

been possible without the aid of the patrol. As an operational issue the decrease in

incidents of all types was astonishing. The mere presence of the patrols, those extra

eyes and ears, obviated much behavior. In addition, the Youth Crime Watch program began to yield a great deal of advance warning, by having a representative

cross-section of the student body, every student knew someone in the program.

Quite often security and administrative would be at the stairwell before the participants in the scheduled fight had arrived, or the Youth Crime Watch trained peer

mediators or counselors had intervened to prevent the incident altogether.

One of the more remarkable corollary effects of Youth Crime Watch has been its

role in advancing equity, access, and dropout prevention. Every school has its star

athletes, musicians, and academic achievers, all of whom garner recognition,

awards, and attention. This program provides a vehicle for all students, exclusive

of any extraordinary talents and skills. All you need for entry into the Crime Watch

is a desire to improve your school and environment. Further movement, into the Patrol, Board Membership, or entry into the Officer Corps, have grade and conduct

thresholds, which prompts many into increased effort. We presently have a lengthy

waiting list for Patrol entry. Many ESE (Exceptional Student Education) students,

ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students, as well as students experiencing a variety of difficulties, have blossomed through their association with

the program. It provides them with a means to contribute, an identity, and an opportunity to make a difference. Students truly appreciate our confidence and enjoy

the responsibility. We have had several former gang members not only contribute

but ascend to leadership positions. I personally find enormous gratification regarding this aspect.

The success of the Youth Crime Watch program was meteoric, within 5 years

Braddock was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice with the National Safe and Drug Free School Recognition Award.

Miami Springs Senior High School after only 2 years was named a National Model

34

Safe School by Youth Crime Watch of America at the National Crime Prevention

Council/Youth Crime Watch of America annual conference.

The Youth Crime Watch program is an integral part of a comprehensive approach

and will serve to enhance other facets. At Miami Springs we have added technology

in the form of surveillance cameras and computer encoded identification badges. In

addition, we have secured the perimeter of the facility. These additional measures

become exponentially more effective when coordinated with a high visibility, high

awareness, active Youth Crime Watch and a committed, involved faculty and administration. The administration must set the tone, actively support safety and security,

and promote vigilance among all staff members. Our business partners and PTSA

play an active role in both the Crime Watch and the operation of the school, and

contribute financially to our efforts. A safe school starts with the principal, extends

from the administration to the staff, involves the community, and reaches out to

every student. Through a collaborative effort and mutual support, the sum is then

greater than the individual components.

Bryan Kleiman is the principal of Miami Springs Senior High School, a school of

almost 4,000 students located just north of Miami International airport. The student

body is diverse and predominately minority in nature (over 92%); the school is larger than 12 school districts in the state of Florida. Bryan Kleiman is a 14-year veteran of the Miami-Dade County School system, and holds an MBA from a top- ten

business school. After an administrative internship he interviewed and received his

first appointment as a member of the inaugural administrative team to open G.

Holmes Braddock Senior High School, the largest high school in the country with

over 5,300 students. As an assistant principal he founded the Youth Crime Watch

program along with the largest YCW Patrol in the country. The unit soon became

an award winner, garnering both local and national honors. In 1994 he interviewed

and gained entrance into the Executive Training program, and after serving as the

intern principal at two Dade county schools in June of 1995 he became eligible for

promotion to the principalship. He was promoted to the principalship of Neva King

Cooper Specialized Educational Center in July of 1995, an ESE center. After serving

there for two years he entered his present position, where his first act was to found

a YCW chapter. The YCW chapter at Miami Springs Senior is one of the premier

programs not only in Dade County but the country. The unit has been cited by the

county organization as the top unit in Dade for 1998–99, and has been named a National Model Site by the National Crime Prevention Council/Youth Crime Watch of

America. Mr. Kleiman has been instrumental in training activities to facilitate establishment of YCW chapters around the country. He has also been a very active

member of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools administrative team, serving on

numerous committees and advisory panels, and maintains an active role in his profession. Mr. Kleiman is the President of the Dade Association of School Administrators, the largest local professional association in the country. Of the various awards

he has won he is most proud of being named the Citizen’s Crime Watch Principal

of the Year for 1998–99.

DISTRICT RESPONSIBILITIES

Youth Crime Watch of America Executive Board.

Superintendent’s Safe Schools Task Force.

Principal Perceiver Specialist.

Superintendent’s Schools of Choice Advisory Committee.

District Teacher of the Year Task Force.

M.A.P.P. & Management Selection Procedures Manual Revision Committee.

Greater Miami Athletic Conference Executive Committee Member.

T.A.D.S. Trainer.

Fringe Benefits Council Representative.

D.C.C. P.T.A. Executive Board Member.

Governor’s Performance Based Budgeting K–12 Task Force.

District Senior High Principal’s Liaison Group.

Region III Senior High Principal Representative.

P.A.C.E.S. Strategic Champion.

District Student Services Technology Committee.

Managerial Classification and Compensation Advisory Committee.

Senator BIDEN. Corporal, we will be pleased to hear from you

and then we will go back and open it up to questions.

35

STATEMENT OF CORPORAL JEFF GILES, DELAWARE STATE

POLICE, AND SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICER, WILLIAM PENN

HIGH SCHOOL

Corporal GILES. Thank you, Senator Biden, distinguished members. I was advised three minutes and it is pretty much exactly

three minutes, so—— Senator BIDEN. You can take as much time as you want.

Corporal GILES. I am the SRO right now at William Penn for this

year. We basically have just gone over the high school incidences.

There has been a decrease in violent crimes, but there is still a

problem with a lot of the criminal violations, such as disorderly

conducts, criminal trespasses, and criminal trespasses are your students that have been suspended and are not supposed to be at

school and they come back to school, or a lot of students that are

not students, they just come to school looking for trouble. And basically, the effective preventive strategies we try to apply toward

these instances.

Early intervention is very important, working together with the

student advisors in a proactive role. The student advisors, basically, at William Penn, there are two disciplinary student advisors,

and my office is right next to theirs. We basically work together.

So, basically, a lot of the students that come down for discipline,

I get to meet, pretty much on a daily basis.

Also, I do not wear the uniform at William Penn. I wear plain

clothes. I am much more approachable. I do have a weapon and I

get a lot of questions asked me about the gun. Of course, I say it

is for their protection and it is not meant to alarm anybody. But

I do not wear the uniform. Actually, today, I had a lot of students

looking at me. ‘‘What is going on, Mr. Giles? What is going on?’’

They pretty much figured I probably was testifying.

Opening effective communications with the students, it is easy to

say but it is the one where you need to be available. It is difficult

at times to be able to talk to all the students and recognize difficulties. A lot of the quiet students are the ones that you need to talk

to, and just getting out in the hallways and meeting them and talking to them and finding them is the difficult part.

You have got to build trust and confidence between the students

and the SRO. Trust and confidence are two words that are pretty

hard to basically measure, but that is just with communications

and being open with them. They get to recognize you and get to

talk to you.

The importance of availability to the students and to parents, as

well, is one thing I think needs to be mentioned. The parents have

a very important part in this, and when I do talk to students about

certain things or they come to me with their problems, the first

thing is I tell them, let us call your parents up and advise them

of what is going on here. Plus, it is better being proactive in that

nature. Then the parents—some parents do not trust the police at

the school, and it is better for me when I talk to them early to alleviate some problems that we could have later on. So the parents

are aware that their student is talking to me. It sort of opens up

the communication.

Some of the current programs that we have, I teach in the classroom, as a lot of our SRO’s do. I personally instructed drug and alVerDate 11-MAY-2000 03:54 Sep 08, 2001 Jkt 073138 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B138.XXX pfrm02 PsN: B138
36

cohol awareness, laws of arrest, street safety, anger management.

Anger management really seems to be what the students basically

get a lot out of, just dealing sometimes with their anger and their

temper. Getting into the classrooms. A lot of the students, I am not

going to be able to meet and the only way to meet them is actually

going into the classrooms and instructing.

There is a Project Aware, where I take some students to a prison

and it is sort of like a scared straight. A lot of times, I took 20 students, and it is sort of time consuming. It is hard to do this. I

would like to do it more often, take more students, but it is hard

because you take the students out of school for the day, but it has

been advantageous.

Camp Barnes, we take students down to Camp Barnes for some

team building. You have got a lot of resources that we could use

and Camp Barnes is great.

Academy tour—— Senator BIDEN. Camp Barnes, by the way, is a State Police camp

for youth that has existed for a long time here in Delaware, in case

you were wondering what Camp Barnes was.

Corporal GILES. Academy tour—I have not done this yet, but I

am going to be taking some students interested in law enforcement

to the academy, and ones that are really not that interested in law

enforcement, just take them to the academy and show them basically what a police academy is about. Again, that is breaking the

barriers down so they can see really what police work is.

The Trooper Youth Basketball League, we have every year. We

have underprivileged children in the Youth Basketball League

where the coaches are police officers, similar to the police athletic

league, and we help out with the students there.

And, basically, there is personally mentoring. I just started this.

Basically, it is an assistant for the day. You take a student who

is having a lot of troubles or a student who has really been angered

and is angry and having difficulties at school and I basically take

them for the day. In this one instance I had, I took the student

with me over to George Reed because they had a problem at

George Reed and the administration at the school said fine. So he

went over to George Reed and was my assistant for the day, and

he really enjoyed it and he actually comes to my office all the time

and sees me and it has really helped him out with his problems.

Again, breaking the barriers for the students and parents to view

police in a positive way and develop trust and confidence is the

main goal in crime prevention. Time and availability are the needed requirements. Open effective communication has decreased the

number of criminal violations, but there is no way to measure this.

Basically, I know speaking for all the SROs, I believe that the early

intervention and talking to the students has helped decrease it, but

we cannot really put a number on it. It is hard to measure. We just

keep moving along and trying to keep developing this program.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you, Corporal.

I will tell you now, one of the things that I have in mind, and

this is an official hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee and

they are going to be amazed and pleased that I have increased the

membership of the committee in the United States Senate—— [Laughter.]

37

And maybe we will all learn something in return from this—— Ms. CONNOR. Do we get your salary? [Laughter.]

Senator BIDEN. No, you do not get my salary or my staff, and you

do not have to go to Washington every day, either. But all kidding

aside, one of the things that I can tell you now, Corporal, that I

am going to be asking to do when the school year ends is ask to

meet with all the school resource officers, all of you at once, unofficially, to have a long breakfast with me or spend the morning with

me and just talk to me about practically how this is working and

how it can work so we can get through all the formality of this.

I am going to begin with some questions and then I am going to

open it up. Senators tend to be Senators, so I am going to recognize

the Senator first, even though the Speaker is here, and then ask

anyone who wishes to ask questions to do that because, again, this

will be instructive to the full committee in the Senate because of

the perspective my colleagues bring to this, as well.

I also would like to ask unanimous consent, and since I am running the hearing, it will be granted—it used to be in the old days,

I was chairman of this committee for 16 years. Now I have been

a ranking member for four. Ranking member is a euphemism for

having no power, and that is why I like holding these hearings.

At any rate, Dr. Meney has a statement for the record that I

would like to put at the end of Corporal Giles’ statement prior to

my interruption for questions.

Senator BIDEN. Let me begin, and although I may direct a question to one of you, anyone who wishes to respond, I would appreciate your input, and I will limit myself to a ten-minute round here

and then yield to my colleagues and then if I have more questions,

come on back.

First of all, one of the things that I would like to get a sense of

in your collective experience is are there any similarities that can

be drawn from your experiences around the country? Let me explain what I mean by that.

Is it an axiom that where there is—I am making this up, but

where there is a good teacher-administration relationship, that you

have better prospects for coordination of whatever program you are

putting in place?

Is there where there is more direct parental involvement? Quite

honestly, we did not talk much about parents’ involvement in this

whole process, where you actually reach out, where the schools

reach out into the community, and not just in a parent-teacher

meeting but hold literally meetings where they say, we want to discuss trouble or violence or concerns you have about safety in the

schools and actually have meetings, whether they are after school

or evening meetings.

Or is there any correlation between school size and difficulty? My

mother would say to you, Bryan, no purgatory for you, son, straight

to heaven, with a school of 7,000 people. But again, all of us who

hold public office, some know more about some areas than others,

but we all are a little bit like that joke they tell about the Texan

who said, ‘‘I do not know much about art, but I know what I like.’’

When I was a local official or county councilman, which is a more

difficult job than the one I had now, in 1970, I was one of the few

people in public office who was against consolidating our schools.

38

I did not want consolidated school districts. I thought they were a

gigantic mistake, born out of a prejudiced view, not out of a view

that I was particularly informed. I was a lawyer. I was not an educator.

But I believe that if you have four schools making up 500 in each

high school, you have 55 kids who started a football team instead

of 11. You have 50 cheerleaders instead of ten, and so on and so

forth. I realize they are slightly more costly, but given the choice

of having all the best teachers in one school or five great administrators and mediocre teachers in a smaller school, I would take five

great administrators and mediocre teachers in a smaller school

than I would the best teachers, not a so hot administrator in a

large school. That is a prejudice I have. I cannot sustain that.

So that is why I want to ask, are there any similarities? If you

take a look at the schools that have had the most serious difficulty,

they have not been schools the average person would have thought

of—hardly any black kids involved, hardly any Hispanic kids involved in all of these. Can you imagine what the country would

have done if Columbine was a group of black kids wearing dashikis

and wearing baggy clothes? There would be race riots in America.

We would be calling for all these broad solutions. Paducah, Kentucky, there were not any Hispanic kids, there were not any black

kids. These are not schools that are having these celebrated problems that are coming from the inner-city ghettoes.

What is the deal? What is the deal? How come? Even though we

are talking about—I think if you asked the press and you asked us

where you would pick the most violent schools, we would not have

picked Columbine. We would not have picked Paducah. You would

not have picked the schools where most of these things occurred.

We would all have our candidates, again, reflecting a different kind

of prejudice, in my opinion.

And so my question is, are there any broad similarities that require sort of a platform from which you have to start for success?

Do they relate to school size? Do they relate to teacher-student ratios? Are there any of those kind of indicia that would indicate you

are more likely or less likely to be able to successfully build programs that diminish violence in schools? Anyone can answer.

Ms. RILEY. Yes, Senator, we have a list, some of those characteristics that we can point to, and in some cases, they do not all fall

into place, but for the most part. If we look at schools that focus

on academic achievement, schools that focus on knowing the students and caring for the students. So it is not enough just to

say——

Senator BIDEN. What does that mean, though? What is knowing

the——

Ms. RILEY. Kids that do not fall through the cracks, that there

are provisions made within the school to make sure that problems

are identified early and that there are treatments and support for

students that need help so that they do not fall through the cracks.

So known and cared for.

Schools that involve families in meaningful ways, and this is so

difficult, and we have not really talked about parents that much,

but over and over again, I do not care where, what group, how do

we involve parents more? It is a really tough question, and espeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 03:54 Sep 08, 2001 Jkt 073138 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B138.XXX pfrm02 PsN: B138
39

cially for policy makers. Should we, can we legislate good parenting? Those issues come up over and over again as far as, yes,

parents need to be more involved in the educational lives of their

children. Schools need to reach out to parents and bring them more

into the education setting. But these are real difficult. Educators

know that we get good parents in here that help the children. It

is very difficult to get the parents that we really need to talk to

as far as the students that are having the problems.

Links to the community, that is a characteristic that has been

identified for safer environments for learning.

Positive relationships among students and staff—— Senator BIDEN. Now look, with all due respect, you are beginning

to sound like the State Department. [Laughter.]

The average person out there does not buy any of this stuff. Let

us be honest with them. They do not know what positive relationships mean. What do they mean? What specifically are you talking

about? You can testify in a minute. Let me get their answers and

then I will be happy to have you. What do you mean? Give me an

example of a positive relationship. Is it one where the teachers are

calling the parents a lot? I mean, what does that mean?

Ms. RILEY. Relationships that are built on respect, that consequences for actions are followed through on. There is consistency,

there is fairness that is viewed on the part of both teachers and

students.

Senator BIDEN. Jon.

Mr. YEAKEY. Some of the things that Dr. Riley is listing right

there comes from a document that comes out of the State Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Education, ‘‘Early

Warning, Timely Response,’’ and I do not know how many folks in

this room have seen that guide, but it is a very good guide, but unfortunately, a lot of people like you looked at it and said, well,

these are great things, but how do you actually do any of these

things?

I think making meaningful connections and involving parents in

meaningful ways means that the schools have to go out of their

way to get in touch with parents. Right now, a lot of schools say,

well, we did our best. We held a PTA meeting and nobody came.

Well, we invited our parents in the newsletter and nobody came.

We shared our discipline policy when we sent home the parent-student handbook, but the parents still call and get upset when we

discipline their child.

Those are copouts, to be honest, on the school district’s part, of

not going above and beyond the call to get the word out to parents,

and that means calling every parent individually and making sure

somebody at the school, being a teacher—most successful schools

out there are dividing up their student population by teacher and

they are having every teacher contact certain parents.

Senator BIDEN. And that is what I am talking about. That is

what I am talking about.

Mr. YEAKEY. Yes. Teachers are getting on the phone to parents

and talking to them directly and saying, ‘‘I am a teacher here at

your son or daughter’s school. Here are some of the things we are

doing. I would like you to come down to this meeting, but if you

cannot, let me tell you about some of the things we are going to

40

talk about. I want to make sure you are clear about our expectations as a school, what we want to have parents know.’’ Senator BIDEN. How about just calling a parent? One of the

things we did in the Violence Against Women legislation is we

passed this legislation all in great meaning and I found I got home

here and not a lot was happening. So I called all the doctors together and I said, look, at the hospital when a woman comes in

and she says she ran into the door for the fourth time and you

know that did not happen, what do you do? What is the problem?

They said, well, we cannot get involved.

So with the help of the legislature and the governor, what we did

is we put someone in every emergency room, a volunteer who sat

there, and we gave a specific name, a specific officer, a specific person, and they said to that person, we said to that woman as she

got off the table after the D&C, God forbid, as she got out of the

room after being stitched and they said, now, look, before you

leave, here is Officer Jeff Giles and there is a district attorney

named, in this case we call him an attorney general, so an attorney

general named John Jones, and here is Mary Wilson who is right

here and she is from the rape crisis center.

We can right now get you in a squad car, take you directly to

your home. There will be a policeman with you. We will allow you

to pick up your material, your kids, what you need. We will take

you to a safe place. We will then, when you go to court, we train

the person, when you walk into court, that when you are a resource

officer you say, what is it? What is the problem? He did what to

you? We train that person to say, now, if you want to tell me what

it is, come on over here and we can do this quietly. We link all the

little things, because all the little things matter.

None of what we are talking about now, not enough of what we

are talking about now are the little things. What I am looking for

is what are the little things? Are there places where schools that

say, here is what we are going to do. We are going to sit down. We

have got a problem in the school.

What I would do if I were a principal, and thank God I am not

a principal, I would get every teacher and say, look, we are dividing the school up here based on every person. You have got the following 50 or 100 students to call over the next month and here is

what I would like you to do. Call them up and not tell them what

our policy is. Ask them what they think is wrong. What does your

kid say when he comes home? Promise them anonymity. Promise

them anonymity. What is your kid afraid of? What is your kid concerned about? Where is it? Write it down.

I mean, those seem to me very basic, practical things that may—

and so they are the kinds of things I am looking for you to tell me

about. Is there any relationship between outlawing beepers in

school and a reduction in drug traffic? Tell me some of those

things.

Mr. KLEIMAN. I will tell you a couple of things that we will do.

One is, I will give you an example I think made a very good point.

The kids need to know that people at that school care about them.

That is absolutely vital. And even with all the thousands of kids

we have, every morning from 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., the kids

know they have got a place, and if there is a parent, a legislator,

41

somebody from downtown, some big muckety-muck from the district office, everybody waits until every kid gets seen. So they know

they have got a place to go directly in and have their voice heard.

And the assistant principals and counselors also come. The kids

need to have access.

Senator BIDEN. I can hear every parent saying, when you said

that you have this sort of safety patrol, you know the first thing

that came to my mind? I went to Catholic school, grade school, and

there used to be crossing guards and they did not have—there were

not enough police officers for crossing guards so they actually had

a safety patrol. You wore those little badges, you know those white

things with a badge on them, and you had every kid on a bus. I

will never forget coming home and telling my father I was going

to turn in my sister. He said, ‘‘You do, do not come home.’’ But that

is a different mentality.

But, literally, you did not have cameras on the bus. You had

safety patrols. You had a kid sitting on the bus who was elected

or picked by the school and he or she sat there on the school bus,

grades one through eight, and was the one responsible for—now,

that is one thing.

I can hear my mother saying, and she is 83 years old, ‘‘You mean

to tell me my granddaughter is going to be in this school where

there is a gang and she is going to be with a radio walking around

in a parking lot turning in somebody who is breaking into a car?

Give me a break, Joey. I am not doing that.’’ Explain to me how you integrate, and this is my last question

and I will yield, explain to me how you integrate the obvious incredible benefit you have derived from this, not just single initiative, it was layered as you said, there are other things going on in

the school, as well, along the lines of what the other two witnesses

were talking about, but how you got the students to agree to participate in the student patrol or whatever the terminology is and

at the same time dealt with their safety so that you did not find

yourself hanging out there?

And were these kids the popular kids or were they the geeks?

Were they the kids other kids would say were the geeks? I mean,

what kind of kid was successful? Tell me a little bit about the

nitty-gritty practical problems of setting one of these patrols in

place, especially in the school that is in a, not overwhelmingly

rough, but relatively rough community.

Mr. KLEIMAN. First of all, I will tell you, in all these years, and

it has been almost ten years now, we have not had any kind of an

incident that you are——

Senator BIDEN. I am not suggesting you do. I am suggesting

what other people are hearing.

Mr. KLEIMAN. I will tell you, first and foremost are school resource officers who are deeply involved in training in

nonconfrontational techniques. Students are never placed in the

kind of precarious position that—we would not do that,

primarily—— Senator BIDEN. Give me an example. If a student is patrolling

the parking lot——

Mr. KLEIMAN. I will give you an example. During that lunch

break where you have got 3,500 students to keep separated from

42

another 1,800 that are having lunch and it needs to be quiet, all

they have to do—first of all, they are equipped with radios. They

are sent out in pairs. And basically, all they have to do is stand

by a door and make sure that nobody is going through it. There is

not really an active—they are not security monitors.

Senator BIDEN. The kid goes to go through the door.

Mr. KLEIMAN. They check for a pass.

Senator BIDEN. And the kid says, ‘‘Give me a break——’’

Mr. KLEIMAN. Then they are trained to step aside.

Senator BIDEN. Good. That is what—— Mr. KLEIMAN. They get on the radio and they inform one of us

and then we—they are not going to outrun the radio signal.

Senator BIDEN. That is the practical point I trying to get across.

I do not want the impression left that these kids are—— Mr. KLEIMAN. They are not acting as police officers or monitors.

They are just eyes and ears.

Senator BIDEN. I think it is a good idea.

Mr. KLEIMAN. And they really, just their mere presence is a deterrent because they have the radios.

Senator BIDEN. What happens after school? I grew up in

Claymont. I can think of a couple neighborhoods not too far from

here that if you, in fact, got on the radio and said, ‘‘Johnny Sisson

just went through the door’’—remember him? A hell of an athlete.

[Laughter.]

I might find myself up in Wharfline, which was an area where— I might find myself having to demonstrate my physical prowess or

lack thereof for having clicked the radio on and said, ‘‘So-and-so

just went through the door.’’ Mr. KLEIMAN. Well, I will tell you two things. One is they represent a true cross-section. They must. The heavy metal kids are

in there. The kids with the blue hair are in there. The athletes are

there. You name it, we have it, computer nerds, you name it.

Senator BIDEN. So the kids with the blue hair—— Mr. KLEIMAN. Across the board.

Senator BIDEN [continuing]. They want to be part of this?

Mr. KLEIMAN. Yes.

Senator BIDEN. You must have done something pretty good to get

kids wanting to participate in this, do you follow me? Is there any

secret to that now?

Mr. KLEIMAN. It is just what I said earlier. Programs do not

teach kids, teachers teach kids. If you want this to work, you make

sure you pick a dynamite person to go ahead and be the spark plug

to start. And, you know, every school has people that everything

they touch turns to gold, and you have them and every school has

them, and there are people that work well with the kids and then

other kids want to be with it.

Part of our success in terms of tips and crime prevention over the

years, as I mentioned, we have been there at stairwells where

fights were supposed to have happened and then had the kids arrive. By having a cross-section of the student body, everybody

knows someone, and I do not care how ‘‘bad’’ a kid is, somebody out

there cares about them. Somebody out there does not want to see

something happen to them. So somebody will let us know. It is not

to be a snitch. It is not to be nasty about it or malicious. Somebody

43

will come up and say, you know, I do not really want my friend

to be thrown out of school. This is what they are up to. Do something about it.

Senator BIDEN. A number of times I got whipped, I wish somebody had looked out for me and there would have been a way out.

Anyway, I should not be facetious. I am going to yield, then—— Mr. YEAKEY. Senator Biden, can I follow up for a second on a

comment you made?

Senator BIDEN. Please.

Mr. YEAKEY. You were talking about the efforts you have made

in the State to have a social worker in emergency rooms, and I

think that is tremendous. That shows the kind of connection—— Senator BIDEN. Actually, they are just volunteers. They are not

even social workers.

Mr. YEAKEY. What a lot of States have been moving towards is

getting teachers on the phone to talk to parents so they can talk

about what is really important. Teachers, in a lot of cases, are

scared to do that because they do not understand how to talk to

parents or respond when parents share with them problems they

are having. ‘‘I do not know how to deal with my son, because to

be honest, when his father starts yelling and screaming and hitting

me,’’ and teachers do not know how to respond to that or support

parents effectively that way and a lot of schools do not have somebody that they automatically know to refer that parent to or get

a community mental health or social worker in that community to

support that parent or those kids.

A lot of States are moving to tying funding for additional mental

health workers to making sure that person gets based at the

school. So if you are going to get additional mental health funding,

a counselor, mental health counselor from the community, not just

another school counselor that is going to be made to do administrative work like an assistant principal, but a community mental

health professional is going to be at the school and have an office

there and be there for an automatic referral for kids when they are

identified as having an additional need or for parents when parents

bring up issues or need additional assistance, because most schools

do not have that kind of resource unless it is given to them.

Senator BIDEN. One of the things—— Mr. KLEIMAN. It is very effective. We have one on board.

Senator BIDEN. Well, I lied. I will ask one more question. [Laughter.]

One of the things that seems to work in private schools—now, I

want to make it clear, I am not one of those who thinks we should

be funding public and private schools. I may be the only guy in this

outfit who thinks that. But one of the things I have observed is in

private schools in this State, and we have—I do not know if it is

good or bad, but we have, I think, the largest percentage of students in private school of any State in the nation, if not the largest,

very close, and in private schools, most of which are relatively expensive, mothers and father both work but they aggressively invite

the parents to participate during the day in the school, aggressively, I mean aggressively in the three schools that I am familiar

with, where they go out and they go to the parent and they press

for them to take days off, they press for them to take their spare

44

time and come and work in the library, to work in the lunch room,

to work as monitors. I mean, it is amazing. It aggressively brings

the parent into the classroom, working the stairwell, figuratively

speaking.

Do you have any experience with public school programs like

that, where they aggressively go out and try to get the parent to

be in the school, walking the halls, being in the lunch room, et

cetera?

Mr. YEAKEY. That is extremely effective. There are some public

schools out doing it and doing it in a variety of ways, having parent

ambassadors on the buses, to travel on buses with kids to and from

school and to every activity. The problem is, what you need is you

need an administration and you need teachers that are committed

to doing that because you can pay a lot of lip service, and a lot of

public schools pay lip service, ‘‘We really want to get parents involved,’’ but the truth be told, a lot of teachers, and I am an exhigh school teacher, a lot of teachers would just as soon get the

kids in the classroom and close the door and teach them for their

50 minutes or 90 minutes.

It is a little unnerving to have a person from the community, a

parent, there who in their view is staring over their shoulder and

could cause them trouble. You have got to break down that stereotype. We have got to get parents and teachers and administrators

to be more supportive of that idea.

Ms. RILEY. There are many programs around the country. One

of them I am thinking of is called POP’s, Parents on Patrol, when

dads actually come to school at lunchtime.

Mr. YEAKEY. Yes; we did that.

Ms. RILEY. So there are examples of that. And then the school

carrying itself to the community, having a PTA meeting somewhere

else other than the school, having it at a community center, a rec

center, or a housing development in a community.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you. Senator?

Ms. CONNOR. Thank you, Senator. I just would like to share with

you that I am a former teacher, and, as a matter of fact, right here

in this district, and then a full-time mommy for 18 years. The fun

part for me was that I taught elementary music, so they liked coming to my topic. That was a fun kind of thing. But I have been a

PTA officer a home mommy, went on the field trips when other

parents could not go, even though my family members were not on

the trip, because I thought it was vital to give them.

And when I say PTA, so many people think of Parent-Teacher

Association. I have never looked at it as that. To me, it was ParentTeacher Administration, and you must have that partnership to

make that work.

This district has done a lot of good things right here where you

are. They have done a lot of good things. One of the good things

they did was when the funding came through for the resource officers. And if I recall correctly, this may have been one of the first

districts in the State.

Senator BIDEN. It was the first, the very first.

Ms. CONNOR. And Kevin Semansky has done an incredible program that he ran. You have a very tough road to follow, young

man, and I know you will do well.

45

I am only wishing, and I was glad to read in the possibility of

six more coming for our State with State Police support, and a couple months ago, many of us received letters from a downstate

school district, Wake Forest, where their funding has run out.

Their officer would be leaving them, and it was in mid-year. The

wonderful part of it was the youth of the school put together fundraisers to retain this young man to stay with them. We all have

wonderful youth, and many of them—there are some that met you

today that are here in this district, and I am fortunate that one of

my children happens to be one of those good kids. They do have

an impact on their student friends, and that word of mouth is a

wonderful thing and we cannot put a price tag on that, what they

do.

And I know where Miami Springs School is in Miami. My mother

lives in Key Biscayne, and I visit in that area quite often. It is an

incredible uphill battle that you have overcome there, and I give

you a lot of credit.

My question is, we have a DARE program in our State that handles three, four, and five, third, fourth, and fifth graders. Now we

get to a resource officer at William Penn High School. What are we

doing at six, seven, and eight? It is the most disruptive time of

their hormones and everything. We really have an upheaval there.

We do not have anybody, to my knowledge, in the Colonial District

or in any of the other districts on the junior high level.

Now, you pointed out a statement, Jeff, and pardon me if I may

call you by your first name, that you took your student with you

to an incident that occurred at another school.

Corporal GILES. Yes.

Ms. CONNOR. How can we assist to get something on the junior

high level that would help you?

Corporal GILES. Yes; right now, I handle the incidents at William

Penn plus incidents at the George Reed, and it is difficult. It would

be a lot easier if I was just at William Penn or just at George Reed.

We have another SRO who has three. He handles just three of the

middle schools.

Ms. CONNOR. OK.

Corporal GILES. And it is difficult. It is just a manpower issue.

We just do not have the availability of them. But I can say that

we have just about as many incidences at George Reed that I am

needed at that I am needed at William Penn.

Ms. CONNOR. And the geographic, we have got Newcastle Middle,

which is this side of the way, but then we have County Bedford,

which is quite a few miles, and our district is relatively close.

When you look at Christina, they have got Newark and then they

have got their pocket within the City of Wilmington. So we all have

this geographic situation as far as sharing officers. I would like to

find out if there are ways that we can assist to help with that situation. That is one of the concerns I have. These officers then we

can use, and I am going to look at our superintendent, we can use

these resource officers at any particular level, not just at the high

school, am I correct? All right.

The size of the student body, we have got 2,300 at this high

school. It is the largest high school in the State. Is there a way that

46

we can do that per student body count, I mean, how we do classroom teachers? We do it on body count.

So these are questions that I would like, if there is any way we

can do, and in referring to parent involvement, you see that banner

up there, ‘‘Superstars in Education’’? This school district received

it for their teacher center Statewide program, and I happen to sit

on that team that did the choosing of the outstanding programs.

Downstate, we have a program where the school bus in August

with the teachers on board go to visit the children that are going

to come to that school. Every student that comes to visit—and it

is publicized—that bus gets a T-shirt, ‘‘I am a student at,’’ and on

the first day of school, they are asked to wear that shirt. Already,

you have a partnership.

I remember there was a former administrator in this district in

June, July, and August made a personal visit to every student coming to his elementary school. Every teacher made a visit to that

home. How can we, as classroom teachers—and I will say we, because once you are, you are—how can we understand what our

children are sitting at that desk if we have not walked where they

live? It is vital. We give assignments to children that may not even

have a pencil at home. We give a project for extra credit and do

not supply what they need to do the project with.

We have to be ever mindful of those situations, of what we do,

and if we set the children up for failure, they will take it in an action because of their frustration, maybe on another student, maybe

on the bus driver. That is their frustration. I cannot perform like

that. I do not hold up to the other students. You always have parents that will be supportive if we go get them, and I think it has

to be that, the partnership.

Senator BIDEN. How practical is that?

Ms. CONNOR. We will be looking for more money. [Laughter.]

Mr. KLEIMAN. We do something kind of like that. This summer,

for the third year, we will have all of our incoming ninth graders

in for kind of like what they call in pro football a mini-camp. For

us, we are so big it takes two full days, but the kids come in, a

lot of their parents come with them, and we do it for the whole day.

We get, out of 1,100 ninth graders, you probably get 950 of them

and a lot of parents.

We give them a T-shirt that says ‘‘Hawk Quest’’ and they get a

planner. They also get a book to read. It is over the summer. And

we do a scavenger hunt so they are in the building. They meet

faces. They meet teachers. They get their counselor. We set up

schools within a school to try to personalize a very large environment. So they have contact.

What I found is that they do not really have, that whole first

month, the ninth graders do not have that ‘‘caught in the headlights’’ look. They actually know their way around the building.

They know people they can connect with. They have met a bunch

of their teachers. We set it up as like a school within a school for

them and it has been very effective in keeping them in school and

getting the parents there, because a lot of the parents will come

with them and at that point we get them involved with the PTSA.

So it is very effective. I wish we could do more in terms of getting

out to the homes, as you mentioned, but with 1,100——

47

Senator BIDEN. In terms of the resource officers, for the record,

the legislation I wrote provides for—we have 102,000 new police officers in the last five years nationwide. Of those, two years ago,

they amended it providing for school resource officers. There are

2,639. I would point out for the record that over 40 States have

surpluses. It is real easy, real easy. Instead of States talking about

a tax cut, they could easily do what we did nationally. They could

provide for more officers.

So the idea that the Federal Government has a responsibility— I acted because States were not acting, and that is why I acted to

provide for these officers. To be very blunt about it, the purpose of

my doing that was, quite frankly, to embarrass the States so that

the States would see how well this works and decide that with a

significant surplus, for example, we have here in Delaware, Delaware could easily fund it. Why would Joe get more money, only to

be told that Joe is a big spending liberal Democrat—not by anyone

here—providing this money and the States do not do it.

So that is really an important piece here. Part of what we do federally is we only provide seven percent of all education money that

there is. There is a national debate going on right now. And so

through the Biden crime bill, you are funded—well, I do not know

if you particularly are, but the badge usually is funded in the

school. We are going to get six more for you here in the State of

Delaware.

But as I work, there are ways in which to do this by providing

more badges, more sworn officers in that circumstance. But I say

that, again, I mean that literally. Most people do not know. I mean,

all the legislators know and we know, but most people do not know,

nor should they have to worry about, who is ultimately paying for

it. They are ultimately paying for it. They are the taxpayers. But

we can probably use, I hear from around the country, we can probably use 30,000 school resource officers. That is why I have a new

crime bill adding another 50,000 police officers over the next five

years to be able to be used flexibly by States like this.

Mr. YEAKEY. I was just going to say, States are following the lead

that the crime bill provided because South Carolina this year is

phasing in middle school SROs for every middle school, and that

is their State legislature said, if we are going to have one in every

high school, then we are going to make sure we have one in every

middle school this year.

Senator BIDEN. Good. The Speaker has a previous engagement

and I am going to let him go next.

Mr. SPENCE. Thank you, Senator. I would like to thank you personally on behalf of all of the citizens that are here, teachers, parents, students, police officers. Thank you for allowing all of us to

take part in your conference today because it is so important to all

of us.

I could say thank you to a lot of people out in the audience that

have been involved for years—the administration here in the Columbus School District, the superintendent and assistant, president

of the State Teachers Association. Everybody in this room has

played a major role in the last ten years of passing legislation in

Delaware to reduce, if you will, or address discipline and violent

crime throughout our school system here in Delaware.

48

I guess it has been 10 to 12 years ago, we passed legislation,

House bill 85, for mandatory reporting of crimes to the local police

agency as well as the Department of Public Instruction because

there were really no data or statistics of what was happening

throughout the school, and through the support of the superintendent and assistant and President of the board and many others, we were able to get and build a strong consensus on legislation

that did exactly what we all wanted to do, and that is so we could

bring focus and start to bring in some resources. At that time, we

did talk about police officers in the public school system. I would

not point out any particular administration, but they said it cost

too much money. So our good friend, the Senator here, thank God

for him and his legislative initiative that would bring about the

kind of funding for police officers.

Anyway, two quick questions. As I travel up and down the State

as Speaker of the House and a former candidate for governor,

many of the people and parents I spoke with and even students

asked me the questions of a dress code, because the kids and their

parents and their dress and all this. The parents seemed to be excited about it. The students’ tennis shoes cost $200 and one parent

cannot afford it. They disappear at the school when the kid gets

down in gym or whatever might happen. It seems to create a problem with a lot of jewelry, a lot of fancy clothes.

Most of the parents I have met with said, why do you in State

government not do something about the dress code, not necessarily

uniform, but an appearance or a dress code that means something

to the kids. We have a charter school that has a dress code, very

well accepted by the parents, the students. The kids are excited.

They picked their colors and the whole thing. One question is,

across the country, and it seems to be an important issue to parents and students, possibly about a dress code.

The second thing is, discipline problems, from what I understand

as a legislator and speaking with parents and students, sometimes

or a lot of times are caused because of either a drug addiction or

an alcohol problem, even at a very young age. Many of the States

throughout the years, I have seen in legislative booklets or brochures, National Conference of State Legislators, a number of the

States are addressing drug testing in the schools, whether it is student athletes or probable cause or whatever, not necessarily to arrest the kids but to identify the kids who have drug problems or

alcohol problems at a young age and are causing a discipline disruption to try to bring focus, get them additional education, get the

parents involved, reach out to them before it is too late and they

become a dropout.

Two questions on the national level, because Delaware has not

done anything with the uniforms or our public schools or at least

to address the appearance of the kids and the clothes that are worn

to our public school system.

The second one is, would you encourage us or give us what you

feel is important as far as drug testing in our public school system

to try to reach out to kids who already have drug and alcohol problems at a young age. Those are the two big things here in Delaware.

49

Ms. RILEY. I will start. Yes, I think the dress code issue is one

that is being looked at around the country, especially because the

school districts are looking at how do we make the place of school

safe, and part of the physical environment is how everyone looks.

There is absolutely contradictory research on it, however. There are

school districts like Long Beach, California, where they can show

you the statistics. We have put in uniforms, grades went up and

behavior problems went down, and they attribute that to the dress

code or school uniform situation. There is a difference between

dress code and uniforms, which would be going all the way to requiring everyone to wear the same thing.

But I think there are school districts and communities that are

looking at it as a community issue. Let us make a decision locally

to decide if we are going to, in fact, implement it. Many school districts, as I have seen across the country, are doing it first elementary, then middle, and they are leaving high school out right now

simply because of high school and individualism and students who

say, ‘‘I have a right to wear what I want to wear.’’ But it is certainly an issue that is being looked at around the country.

Drugs and alcohol, that is one of the number one incidents that

we see across the country in schools. In fact, 85 percent of crime

incidents in schools fall under three categories: Possession of a

weapon other than a firearm, because we see firearms there now;

assaults; and substance abuse. So it is a very important issue.

Mr. YEAKEY. You asked about drug testing and trying to help

identify kids early on and how you could guide them. That is a very

sticky and very careful subject to approach, and I just was sitting

around a dinner table with Bill Modulesky and Bernie James from

Pepperdine University, who is a professor of law, and had that conversation, because since the decision with the kid from my home

State, Oregon, this little tiny town, and they did their drug testing,

they went all the way to the Supreme Court and got upheld. A lot

of schools and districts are trying to interpret that very, very

broadly and use drug testing in very, very broad ways. It is going

to get school districts in trouble, not in the effect that they are

going to be held, but they are going to get called on it and be forced

to actually go to court and prove the merit and the right of the

search and stuff to be able to test the kid.

I think drug testing can be a really, really positive thing if it is

done correctly, if you have a right purpose in mind for why you are

doing it. Make sure you are clear and you communicate that to

your parents and community as to why it is you are trying to do

it, because it is a very, very testy subject. You have to be very, very

careful about it. And you have to make sure that you are not just

interpreting things broadly and trying to use that power so broadly

to infringe on kids’ rights and the family’s rights.

So just consider it. Look at a variety of avenues and look at a

variety of places that have done it and look at the different ways

they have tried to institute it so you can decide for yourself what

exactly is the purpose of why you want to do the drug testing.

What are you trying to do?

Mr. KLEIMAN. Our district had a pilot. One of our board members

brought it up and our district piloted it. Because of the legal issues,

it was going to be, quote, ‘‘voluntary,’’ that a parent could do this

50

on a voluntary basis with their student. We would test, and we had

these locking boxes and then they would do pick up. It failed pretty

miserably. The response was fairly poor and sporadic, just to let

you know. I do not think it was well-conceived to start with, to tell

you the truth.

Senator BIDEN. It is fairly expensive, as well.

Mr. KLEIMAN. Yes, and we already have intervention programs

in place and we really did not have the—I do not think the homework was done as it should have been in order to effect it expeditiously so that a student really could be helped. It was more like

a parent trying to turn a kid in.

The dress code issue, I will make a comment on. And again, I

think this varies. We hear things from all over the country. At the

high schools, our district is still fishing for a high school to try the

uniforms. We have had—we meet and our students have a voice in

this on an educational excellence council that the PTA, the administration, the faculty, and the students all have a voice on. Some

of the kids have actually asked for uniforms, not a lot of them, but

some of them have asked for them.

The one thing that we did, and remember the climate, I have

been involved in a multiagency gang task force for many years and

one of the changes at this school right away was we outlawed

shorts for young men. That really helped, because if there was

going to be a trespasser in our climate, they were going to be in

shorts and the gang members usually have their mark down by

their ankle, and so just right away, our incidence of trespassing

went down.

Mr. YEAKEY. I think something else to consider around dress

codes is also the fact that having a dress code or a dress expectation that is not, like was mentioned, is not a uniform necessarily,

and a lot of places have gone to requiring minimum expectation for

dress and also outlawing particular things, like drug paraphernalia. There are a lot of kids that want to wear the marijuana

leaf on the shirt or the hat. They want to wear the Union Jack

around as a sign of intolerance or intimidation. There are a lot of

those things that you can really design dress codes to specifically

address and make sure you protect kids’ rights as well as make

sure every kid feels safe and secure in the environment they are

in at school.

Mr. SPENCE. Can I just add one more quick thing and then I will

yield to my colleagues. Some comments come from principals and

administrators that deal out the punishment for kids and suspensions and expulsions and things. I keep hearing that from a Federal standpoint, and this is important for Senator Biden, I believe,

and please, someone correct me if I am wrong, a lot of the schools

who really are disruptive or cause major problems in the classroom

or the schools, when they are caught and then there are consequences, the parent says, my son or daughter is a special aid student, so under a Federal law, that special aided student is treated

totally differently from the regular population so that suspension

or expulsion or whatever is dealt differently. So a lot of the parents, Senator, who have found out that if you are a special aid or

considered a special aid student, your punishment is a lot less and

it is totally different.

51

I have had a number of school administrators suggest to me to

meet with Senator Biden and Senator Roth and Congressman Castle to talk about the Federal role in trying to make changes so that

kids who are disruptive or a real serious behavior problem can no

longer use that my son or daughter is special aid so you cannot

suspend them or you cannot expel them, you have to treat them

differently. Some of the administrators may want to mention that

to you. I know that. I heard that across the State in many of the

school districts.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you.

Mr. KLEIMAN. That might be something that is a State differential, because we have probably 500 special education students and

they are held to the same code of student conduct as every other

student. The only differential for us is that if it is a manifestation

of their handicapping condition, then we make adjustments. I can

just tell you what we do. It is probably a better idea nationally.

Mr. YEAKEY. That is a concern nationally among many people.

Dr. Allen and I were on a conference call with those State centers

we mentioned earlier and many of them are struggling with that

exact issue because school districts are coming in and saying, we

have got IEP students, students that are 504, and they are having

behavior issues but by Federal law you cannot do some of the same

kind of expulsion procedures or suspension procedures as you do

other kids. That is something that is going to be visited, I think,

federally at your level, Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. That is not quite accurate, with all due respect.

What it is, it requires the school district, they can take action in

the school as long as they maintain concern for that special need.

For example, if you have a child who has a serious attention problem, it falls under the category of Federal law that they have a demonstrable disability. The problem is, the States—I am not speaking about Delaware, as I do not know enough to know—but the

States generically do not provide for alternatives for them other

than the school that they are in.

And so if you have a child with a serious disability who engages

in a disruptive behavior because of that disability, literally a tic,

their inability to keep their motion, to keep their head from moving, disrupting class, engaging in activity that in any other student

would be viewed as disruptive, the State is required under the Federal law, they can take them out of that school but they must continue to give them education. That is where you all are unwilling—

you generically, the State—to meet the long-term responsibility.

So the issue is not whether or not they can be withdrawn from

school, as the superintendent will tell you. It is whether or not

there is a place you can withdraw them to to continue to educate

them because of their identifiable disability. But it is an issue and

it is something that we should meet with Mr. Speaker and maybe

you can get some of those folks together and see whether or not

there should be more the Federal Government should be doing or

we should be interfacing with the States more in order to be able

to provide an alternative. That is basically what it is.

We are running short on time. I know you have got to go. Mike,

and then I will close it with the coach.

52

Mr. MULROONEY. This is a question for anybody. When we are

talking about the teachers making the phone calls home to increase

parental involvement, there is a opinion around in the Delaware

General Assembly, everywhere just about, that teachers already

have too much on their plate. We are just constantly lifting them

up and lifting them up. How would you comment on that opinion,

to get the teachers to do this, and would an idea be year-round

schooling or longer school days? Have there been any studies on

that, as to what effect that would have?

Ms. RILEY. Some States are adding extra workdays either at the

beginning of the year—usually at the beginning of the year—so

that teachers are paid for the time in doing this.

Mr. KLEIMAN. Let me tell you, we try to take as much of the clerical duties teachers are involved in—for instance, we have gone to

the ID cards with the bar codes. Instead of having to write out all

this stuff, the tardy passes, the computer prints them out. I pay

out of our school budget for a calling service. Every kid that is absent, and in a school this size it can get sizable, every parent gets

called every day on every kid that is absent. So that relieves the

teachers of just calling to just notify an absence. So now, hopefully,

they will take that time and use it for things that are more productive.

Mr. MULROONEY. But we were talking about calling just to say,

we have this program available, we are having a meeting. That is

not just—— Mr. KLEIMAN. Well, we use the call-in service for that, as well.

Ms. RILEY. Like a reverse number.

Mr. MULROONEY. And they will call three to five times a day. A

human being makes contact in the home language and then the recording comes on for whatever it is, if it is an absence, a PTA meeting. So that is an attempt to free teachers to do that. It is still a

lot for teachers to do.

Mr. MULROONEY. That is what I was wondering. Is there any

proof that year-round schooling is beneficial for the kids? Instead

of maybe 9 weeks, have a week or two break. They are not on the

streets in the summertime. Are there any studies on that, that that

is beneficial or have effect at all or——

Mr. YEAKEY. There have actually been several studies on that

and results really varied. People like to make statistics kind of say

what they need them to say, and there are examples you can take

from actual cultures that do that same kind of thing and the results you get will vary depending on what you want to get.

I mean, in Japan, many of their kids go to school year-round, but

they also have very high stress rates, very high teen suicide rates,

and that is not something, I do not think, any of us want for our

young people. So there is also that need for kids to have

unstructured time and free time to be able to grow and develop

personally.

Mr. KLEIMAN. Personally, just from observation, I think this is

an enormous differential disparity when you start talking about a

high school junior versus the fourth grade in this area, and also,

I think you will see some hard data collected in the near future.

I mean, in our State, they have just mandated a 210-day school

year for certain students. So stay tuned.

53

Senator Biden. Coach.

Mr. ENNIS. Sir, thank you for the opportunity. I am going to be

brief and just make a couple observations. The focus of your reform

and hearing is on possibly what works, modeling things. We have

heard first a good thing, which I laud, but I would like to make

just a couple of observations.

One thing, I have been in the public education system for 29

years so I have some observations. One of the best things we have

ever done is to have the SRO Program. It does a number of things.

If nothing else, there are a lot of ties between youth and police.

There are perceptions and stereotyping and to have people like

Jeff, plainclothes, talking to them in normal ways about normal

things—he comes to our ball games, he is there at our basketball

games and our concerts and things—and to see that interaction, it

has changed a lot of perceptions. I have kids now who I would call

on the rough side who view a police officer very differently than

they used to.

So I would say that is one thing that has worked and should be,

as I was glad to hear, you are even increasing those types of opportunities. That does work and I think that is a tremendous program.

Of course, you need good people. We have been fortunate.

You also, I think, with the superintendent sitting here, you need

to hire, as you mentioned, that person with that golden touch. You

have to have strong leadership. I have observed in different places

that I have been where you have strong leadership, those who can

sell your programs to the kids, things work. Where you cannot, it

does not. That program might be identical, but it is that ability to

have that strong leader and I think it is incumbent upon our

boards of education to hire the type of people we need.

At my school, we are fortunate to have great leadership and administration, except for Richard Farmer—— [Laughter.]

And several of our students are here, and I just wanted to have

that said.

Ms. RILEY. They are laughing. [Laughter.]

Mr. ENNIS. But we are fortunate, so I can see how that really

does work.

A couple more observations. No program will work, in my opinion, unless you have involvement with the kids, and that is why

I like your student watch. I would call it a community watch, and

I know how that does to communities. To have children—if you do

not have children involved in your programs, then it will never

work.

Second, I would like to just real quickly say something about

what Dr. Riley said. When someone says school violence, I really

do not think of Paducah and all these other places. I think of the

little things. I think of the things you mentioned earlier, the bully,

the intimidation factors. Those are much more important to me

than the actually very small, as you pointed out in numbers, violence that we really do have. Everybody gets alarmed at that. That

does not alarm me, and I am not making light of that. But it is

the small things that lead to the big things.

If you just look at what some of the motivation for some of these

kids were that did the killing, being viewed as not being a part of

54

things, being an outcast, the bully, the teasing. It is all those little

things that are critical. And so you must focus on those things to

address the things that later turn into major crises.

I have always found that any program that does not involve the

kids, but also schools that do not have good extracurricular activities, particularly something like football——[Laughter.]

But the more kids you have involved, an involved kid, we can

show you statistics, and Jeff can back me up on this, Richard

McFarland can definitely back me up on this, kids involved in our

programs have higher GPAs, grade point averages. We can prove

that statistically. And they also, when you look at the number of

infractions, it is way down because they have a stake in something.

They take a stake.

The last thing, those are my observations. I want to throw one

question out for the Senator and the rest of the panel. This was

not brought up, so I saved this.

Senator BIDEN. I do not have to answer any of your questions.

[Laughter.]

Mr. ENNIS. But you might want to. It seems to me that you will

never, never have the kind of impact you really see in reducing

school violence and the things we associate with that unless you

impact those whom they emulate. These kids, I talk to them every

day. I teach the high school-age kid, and when I listen to what they

listen to, the music they listen to, when I hear the movies they go

to see, when I hear the role models that they choose from sports,

and they are not ones I would choose for them, I will just say

that—in other words, if you do not impact the MTV generation and

the people that they emulate, you will never have the kind of impact you want because they have a far greater impact than most

of us do and they spend far greater time with those people, if you

get my drift, listening to them, watching them, dressing like them,

talking like them.

If you do not address that in some way, no program, I think, will

ever have the kinds of impacts that you need, and I do not hear

that being addressed. We seem to really shy away from any type

of thing that might smack of censorship, and yet I do not see any

way around it. If you do not impact who they emulate, you will not

have the kind, as I said, and I will close with that, and I do not

know what is out there. Are people talking about this, because I

know, as a teacher, that is what affects what I get in my classroom.

Ms. RILEY. In a recent survey that I saw, the No. 1 influence on

young people, and this was self-reporting, were peers, my friends,

and No. 2, the media, including music, movies, TV shows, the violence that we see there. But which comes first? I mean, are we seeing this and the kids are doing it and then they are watching each

other? But those two influences and how do we combat that and

how do we convince young people that there is a difference between

a hero and a celebrity, because I think we have gotten those very

much confused.

Mr. ENNIS. Dr. Riley, do you understand what I am saying? If

you watch video and the games they play, it is all violence. And

when you have kids excited about a movie, it is usually a violent

movie. If you do not address that, I mean, we get down to this

mindset in this country that that is what is acceptable.

55

Mr. KLEIMAN. I have to tell you that I agree with you, and I

think it is a societal problem. It is obviously nationwide. I think

what we do at the local level is we have people like you that they

do look up to, and the more people like that we can provide the

kids, you know, good people that will model those behaviors, there

are a lot of kids that look up to those coaches, look up to those club

sponsors, and again, if you put really dynamite leadership positions

at that level, I think that is the only way we have to combat it.

Mr. YEAKEY. And I must add that in the absence of changing or

toward mandating what game makers and what music, you know,

going to a censorship style, we have to try and develop good parenting skills so that our young people early on are not sitting in

front of the tube watching for eight hours a day movies that emulate violence and playing video games that are extremely violent,

and that is difficult because a lot of our parents do not take the

time or have the time all the time to monitor everything their child

is watching or seeing and we are going to have to address it more

and more with the emergence of the Internet, kids’ involvement on

computers at early ages.

My daughter is four years old and she already knows how to play

games on the computer. Now, she plays Reader Rabbit games and

does math games and I hope I can keep her doing that for a long,

long time, but it scares me to think about what kids are able to

access. And while the Internet and the information that is available is wonderful to that, it is also very dangerous if we do not

help, as parents, monitor and guide our kids as to what they are

looking at and making sure we are counseling them and saying,

you know what you are seeing? That is not okay. What that person

does, that is not all right, and then either choosing not to watch

that, let them watch that, or making sure if they are going to

watch it that we counsel them on what it is that they are watching.

Ms. CONNOR. Just to piggyback on that, I think it is their level

of sensitivity. We as adults, and I will tell you, I am in the second

half of this decade, this millennium, over that wonderful number

of 50, and my younger son is 17, and things that will bring tears

to my eyes, the commentating that I will see on television or whatever, sometimes I will ask him to share with me and he just goes,

‘‘So?’’ because—— Mr. YEAKEY. They are desensitized to it.

Ms. CONNOR. Yes, it is because they have seen so much, whether

it is on this or on the screen or on television or hear so much that

they are not picking up on what in our generation would bring us

to our knees, thinking you do not want anyone to witness that or

let alone to live through it, and they have seen so much that, you

know——

Mr. YEAKEY. When ‘‘Saving Private Ryan’’ came out as a movie,

I watched that movie and I was devastated by it. My grandfather

was in World War II and I never walked away from a movie so

emotionally broken after watching the initial scenes of D-Day and

what those people—I was horrified. It scared me and it struck me.

And I had kids in school talking about the fact that they had seen

it and was it not awesome? It was great. I cannot believe it. Was

that not incredible? Was that not cruel? None of those emotions

struck me that way when I watched it.

56

Ms. CONNOR. Totally different.

Mr. KLEIMAN. And the danger would be with the Internet, even

more in greater isolation in the future.

Senator BIDEN. It is an interesting phenomenon, though. I do not

disagree with anything anybody said. One thing you said, Mr.

Kleiman, earlier, and that is, in my view, this is the greatest generation that we have ever had. An interesting little phenomena. I

recently observed a great deal of statistical data about this generation.

I happen to be on a parents’ council for the university my daughter attends and they brought in all these statisticians and pollsters

and, as many of you know, generations for purposes of statistically

identifiable modes are listed in 8-year increments. So the kids who

are in their freshman year in college have more in common in

terms of their value set with kids who are freshmen in high school

than they do with people who are seniors with college. There is a

break, and it is an interesting notion. Sophomores have more in

common with someone who is a sophomore in high school than

someone who is a senior in college.

An interesting thing about this generation, in terms of their preferences and value reaches, they believe more in community service

than any generation since the generation of the 1960s. Teen pregnancy is down in every single category in the United States of

America in the last 7 years. Violence is down in every single category, by race, by economic strata, not merely because of police officers. Their desire for what they consider to be their optimal thing

they want to do when they are older is not to be in the rat race

like their parents and having to make a lot of money. They want

less material things than their parents or than the generation— they are calling them the ‘‘Y Generation,’’ which they are going to

resent as much as the ‘‘X Generation’’ resents that characterization.

So, you know, there are a lot of bad things that are happening,

but I will end this by saying that I think there are also a number

of awfully remarkable trends. My dad has an expression. Every

once in a while, I will get—my dad is 85 years old and in good

health, thank God, and every once in a while, I will get somewhat

frustrated. I am working a lot now and I am, in fact, tomorrow

meeting with the President on this issue. I am very involved in

what they call national strategic doctrine and national missile defense and the ABM treaty and the whole question about nuclear

weapons and our strategic doctrine, which is under review.

And I will come home somewhat frustrated sometimes, and, quite

frankly, worried about human nature’s capacity to accidentally now

annihilate one another. I mean, we are in much more danger of a

nuclear explosion occurring today than we ever were at the height

of the Cold War. And my father, my father, he will say to me,

‘‘Joey, do not worry. America is so big, so strong, the American people are so resilient that nobody can screw things up bad enough in

four years to fundamentally alter things.’’

The point being that it astounds me how resilient our children

are. It astounds me how resilient this society is. It astounds me,

the opportunities that we are about to have—that we are about to

face, and they are opportunities that can literally revolutionize the

57

way in which people’s lives are led. We can close the digital divide in a way that inner-city black youth could be making $65,000 here

instead of us importing 450,000 highly skilled workers from abroad

because we do not have enough people to fill the jobs.

We just increased in this community the H1–B visas to 195,000,

almost all people from India, and I am one who thinks that immigration has built this country. I am not for closing our borders. I

am for opening our doors, which is not a popular position, I acknowledge. But the idea that if we were able to target our resources to provide for over the next 6 years the skills, can you

imagine what would happen if you had 200,000 inner-city Hispanic

and black kids being able to take those jobs in Silicon Valley and

making $75,000 to $80,000 a year? It would transform society— transform society. This is not some pipe dream. This is stuff we

have the ability to deal with.

And I walk away from every day down there more—I mean,

nothing to do with Democrat-Republican, this administration, the

next administration. It is amazing how the message is subliminally

getting across to people, how it is always about four years after the

fact, but how it is getting across.

So I do not walk away from this hearing or my experiences looking at this generation as a troubled generation. I look at this generation, and, quite frankly, their parents—parents are beginning to

make different choices. Thirty-year-old parents are making different choices than the 40-year-old parents made when they were

30. Not many parents are talking like my generation did, the Baby

Boomers. My generation talked about quality time with our children. Malarkey. Malarkey. Not one single significant thing my four

children ever engaged in was done at a time when we said, ‘‘Let

us have some quality time now, son.’’ They were always at times

that were unexpected. They were always at times when we were

available.

And it is interesting to watch. It is interesting to watch this generation that is 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, who are figuring out, you cannot have it all. You cannot both work full time. You cannot both

work full time and both say that your children are going to have

the same kind of considerations you thought they had.

So generations are learning. I do not want to be Pollyanna-ish

about this, but I really think there are a lot of good things that we

could make a whole heck of a lot better if government were just—

all of us, State, local, everybody—if we were just a little bit smarter

in what we do.

Your testimony today is very helpful in getting us to the point

of deciding that it is not rocket science. We are not talking about

rocket science here. The things that matter are the fact you have

some kid in a stairwell or near a stairwell with a walkie-talkie that

can call into the office. This is not rocket science. This is not any

great, great fundamental breakthrough.

The idea we have a school resource officer—as you pointed out,

some States are deciding, hey, this is a good deal. Maybe we should

have more of these school resource officers. And the Federal Government, if I have anything to do with it, will also add more school

resource officers, not in Federal control, if you notice. I want to

make the point, none of this—you have never heard from a Federal

58

officer. You have never heard from me or anyone else about how

you are using this officer, and that is how it should be. That is how

it should be. So there are ways in which we can collectively make

things better.

I am going to have another hearing, and the Senator raised the

question of it is a shame we are not able to hear from some of the

students today. I am going to have another hearing where I am

just going to have students and I am going to invite to participate

in this process, as well, students and teachers and administrators,

and we are going to break them into panels, have administrators

who wish to—not a mandatory deal, because, obviously, I cannot

mandate anything—and teachers, as well, who will come forward,

and kids who will come forward and tell us what they think.

I will be having another one. The question is whether or not,

with all the activity that is going on at the end of the school year,

it is appropriate to have it before the year ends, which I think it

probably is not, or I have it in the end of September, after people

are back into school and it is acclimated a little more. But this is

not something we are going to leave on the shelf here.

Again, I cannot thank you all enough. I have a series of—I am

not going to make a lot of work for you, but I was pleased—I did

not anticipate any of my colleagues would be here. I am delighted

to have them here, obviously. That is why I asked them up here,

but this is a busman’s holiday for them. But I have a series of

questions that I did not take the time to ask that are more specific

about race, and statistics relating to expulsions relating to race,

questions relating to degree of the trouble in school, is it generated

from inside or outside of school, how much of it relates to the kid

who has been expelled coming back to school or the kid who is a

dropout coming into the school, what methodologies have been used

to deal with that. You mentioned one, shorts, for example, no

longer being permissible in Dade County in your school, so obviously you do not have kids walking around with long pants who are

out of school, et cetera.

There are a number of questions, no more than two for each of

you, that I did not get to ask. I would like to ask you at your leisure to submit for the record, if you would.

[The questions referred to were not available at press time.]

Senator BIDEN. And again, I would like to thank my colleagues,

thank the school district for participating, and it is not usually

what you should do, but thank the press for paying attention to

this issue. These kids are good kids. They are our kids. They are

the kite strings on which our whole national ambition is lifted

aloft. I mean, it is not somebody else’s problem, not somebody else’s

kid. They are all our kids.

I have great, great, great, great hope for them. I have great expectations. I think we have passed through a valley in terms of our

national psyche here that we are about to burst out in ways that

we have not in a long time. I made a comment like that, and actually, I was at a dinner party with a couple guys you know, Bruce,

our age, who played ball when we were playing, who after dinner,

I heard them talking about today. It reminded me of ‘‘The Music

Man,’’ you know, pole with a capital ‘‘P’’. I mean, all these kids are

back thinking, where the hell am I?

59

I mean, I look out there and I see they think I am being too optimistic. I see phenomenal, phenomenal opportunities not to leave

people behind, teachers thinking this, administrators thinking it is

changing. It is a little bit like, and I will end with this, the hardest

part of dealing with the crime bill, and I look at the officers out

there, everybody thinks community policing is great now. Nobody

thought it was such a good idea eight years ago when I was pushing it. Why? Community policing meant a cop got out of their car.

It means there were not two in a car. I do not want to get out of

the car in Dobbinsville, over in the east side of Wilmington or

wherever and walk the beat. I do not want to get out of that car.

I would rather be in a car.

But when we figured out and told cops, we will give you all the

resources you need to engage in community policing, they said

okay. The reason why the crime bill worked is not because we

added 100,000 cops, because it exponentially changed the requirements of the 580,000 cops who are out there. In order to get a single Biden cop, you had to change your whole department to community policing, a fundamental change in the way in which we

policed in America. So now we have got 650,000 community police,

not 100,000 new cops.

I see the same kind of thing happening with teachers. I see the

same kind of thing happening as you all wrestle at the State level,

where the responsibility belongs and you know more than we know

about how the education system should work.

And again, I may be overly optimistic. I once said when someone

said that to me, I said, well, it is an occupational requirement. Optimism is an occupational requirement. But I do not think it is

falsely placed. This data, and I realize there are three kinds of lies,

lies, damn lies, and statistics, but the data, the data is encouraging. We have broken the back of the exponential spiral here. The

data is encouraging. We are learning. We are starting to move in

the right direction. Parenting, school administrators, teachers, we

have a long way to go, but we are on the right side of the curve

now, in my view.

The reason for this hearing is not so much how bad things are,

it is that they are getting better and if we are smart, if we are

smart, we will adopt the pieces of this and there will be more to

come in this. This is not the end of my attempt to bring back to

my State and other States, but in my State in particular, what

works and does not work. What works in here may not work in

your school district. It may not work in this high school, Bruce. It

may work in Woodbridge. It may or may not. But there are alternatives that are working in other places that give people ideas.

That is sort of—I view the Federal role in large part being a clearinghouse of these ideas. We are able to get the best people in the

country to come and show up, and hopefully we can collectively

learn a little bit from them.

You have been great witnesses. I truly appreciate your willingness to be here. And again, I doubt whether there are many States

where you would all come and testify where the key legislators—

these are not just key legislators in this district, these are among

the key legislators in the State Senate and the State House. So,

hopefully, we can continue the partnership. I have learned a little

60

bit today from them. Hopefully they will learn a little bit about

what is available from us, and maybe we can end up with more

school resource officers and maybe we can end up with continuing

to fund some of what we have done.

That is the last thing I will say. Bruce, I am not going to take

the time of the committee now, but there are three specific initiatives that deal with the subject you raised about the media, about

the press, about the culture that we are operating in, and I realize

that teachers, like Senators, like lawyers, like lawyers, could all be

better, but I think—my Grandpa Finnegan used to have an expression. I would say, ‘‘Grandpa, can I do such and such?’’ and he

would look at me and say, ‘‘Joey, I do not think the horse can carry

that sleigh.’’ I do not think the horse can carry that sleigh, meaning the load is bigger than the horse is designed to pull.

I think we ask teachers to do an awful lot, an awful lot. Some

of them, out of frustration, decide they are not going to do any of

it. But a teacher today is met with a set of requirements to be able

to teach that exceed anything, anything, anything you had when

you started teaching. And so I hope that whatever we contemplate

for teachers or administrators, we also contemplate the compensation that relates to what they should be receiving when they, in

fact, take on this additional responsibility.

So I thank you all. I thank my colleagues for being with me. I

thank all of you for being here. In all probability, and I say to the

students, I want you thinking about what you think I should be

doing. I mean this sincerely. This is not hyperbole. I sincerely

mean it. You can call the Wilmington office. I am actually going to

leave one of my staff members behind. Who am I leaving behind?

I am leaving you behind. Stand up there. Let them see this guy.

He is one of the experts on my staff on the Judiciary Committee

and I am going to leave him behind.

Any ideas you have about how you think we can get students to

meaningfully come and tell us what is on their mind about safety

in schools, it would be a helpful thing. We will probably do it, as

I think out loud, probably the end of September, the beginning of

October, and I invite my colleagues to come back with me then, as

well.

But thank you all very, very much for your time, and officers all,

thanks for being here. You are the best. Thanks a million.

[Whereupon, at 12:22 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

Æ