To rectify the situation, Lappin and his staff agreed to patrol the halls each period, sending students not in class to the tardy room. As tardies piled up, students faced conferences with the dean and their parents. Suddenly attendance improved. With the staff focusing on education, Lappin says, students started enjoying school and were less interested in fighting. If kids are afraid, they don't learn.
Fear wipes out learning.
To clean up the school, Lappin had some walls painted a calm off-white and others in colorful murals. He also participated with USC and its Family of Five Schools initiative in programs such as Kid Watch, which identified the safest routes for students to walk to school and recruited neighborhood volunteers to call 911 if they saw children in danger. Despite vast improvements, Lappin worries that much remains to be done. Walking through the hall recently a few minutes before the end of class, he spots a teenage girl leaving a room early. I didn't hear a bell ring.