December Newsflash
Lines of responsibility cross as violence shakes Edison school
When a horrific crime takes place in a public school where management is contracted out to a private company, where do the lines of responsibility lie?
In the case of a boy’s rape at Stetson Middle School last month, opinions raged in the days that followed. An 11-year-old boy who was cutting class engaged in a dispute over a ball with a 12-year-old male student in the bathroom. The 11-year-old chased the 12-year-old through the hallway and raped him in a secluded fire tower stairway.
The perpetrator’s mother, during a protest at the school on November 22, complained, “It’s the school’s fault.”
The young victim, accompanied by his mother, reportedly wore a sign to the rally that read, “I was raped by the school district.”
During a community meeting nearly a week later, parent and community activist Eva Caraballo read a statement of responsibility directed solely at Edison Schools, the education management organization (EMO) contracted to run Stetson. Edison was hired to manage Stetson in 2002 when the School Reform Commission decided that 45 of the system’s most troubled schools would be better off in the hands of outside management.
Meanwhile parents took the microphone to lecture each other, charging too much watching of “novelas” (soap operas) and arguing that viewing pornographic movies with images of “machismo” contributed to children’s behavioral problems.
School District spokesman Vincent Thompson, hours before the meeting, told the Notebook, “The School District of Philadelphia puts a large emphasis on the responsibility for safety and security of an EMO school on the backs of the EMO. They’ve been hired to run that school, and we expect them to run that school.
“But we also understand that every school in the District is the responsibility of the School District of Philadelphia,” Thompson added. “So we have a responsibility as well. We understand our mutual role.”
Although Edison – with firm pressure for immediate action from Vallas – made leadership changes at the school, it has been the District that has responded most visibly to the situation.
Edison removed Stetson principal Sergio Rodriguez from the school, and in the interim, installed the District-preferred candidate, Yvonne Savior, with 30 years’ experience in the District.
“Stetson was a tragic incident that frankly shocked us, shocked the school, shocked the District,” said Edison spokesman Adam Tucker from his New York office. “And that’s why we’re all focused on identifying how this happened and making sure we do everything within our power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The District, meanwhile, assigned its faith-based relations coordinator as well as a special assistant to the District’s CEO to the school, as well as adding three officers to the five school officers already assigned to Stetson, located on B Street and Allegheny Avenue in West Kensington.
The victim was reassigned to a school of the parents’ choice. The aggressor was suspended in anticipation of expulsion to a disciplinary school. Siblings of the aggressor were moved to another school to avoid disruption, and parent meetings were scheduled for the following weeks.
Edison’s approach to safe schools has caused clashes with the District in the past, and some argue that Stetson was a tragedy waiting to happen.
Upon taking over management of 20 Philadelphia schools in 2002, Edison cut secretarial, support and non-instructional staff members. At Stetson, that meant a reduction of nine NTAs, leaving one NTA and one police officer to secure the sprawling, five-story building with more than 900 students.
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers toured the school at that time, and reported on gangs of class-cutting students, roaming hallways and disrupting classes, and of a girl being overheard threatening to kill the unborn baby of a pregnant teacher.
“The Federation has been concerned for some time about the lack of order and lack of adequate supervision in that school,” said spokeswoman Barbara Goodman, noting it did not have a principal when that year opened.
The School District soon intervened to re-instate the NTAs and other support staff at Stetson – and some as well in other schools -- to seek control of the environment.
Explaining Edison’s philosophy, company spokesman Adam Tucker said, “Our model does not call for the number of NTAs (non-teaching assistants who help patrol the school) Philadelphia schools traditionally have. We like to take those same dollars and put them in instructional staff. What we’re trying to focus on is kids’ (being) proficient or advanced in reading and math. And our strategy is to spend more money on people who teach.”
More recently at Stetson, parents like Betty Pagan said repeated attacks on her two sons in special education at the school were responded to with little more than incident reports. According to one news report, a score of teachers staged a sick-out to bring attention to conditions at the school, and one school police officer called the environment at the school “a zoo.”
Goodman noted that obviously, security in the school had been beefed up since those weeks in 2002. But she concluded, “Schools do best under strong leadership with clear standards for conduct that are understood and enforced adequately across board. And when schools lack that, it’s chaotic. Teachers can’t teach.”
A chronic problem of high teacher turnover has persisted at Stetson, with five teacher vacancies currently posted on the School District website.
Richard Barth, senior vice president for Edison, declined to comment on why the company had not changed the leadership structure at the school, citing personnel policy.
Tucker was quick to point out that the differences over NTAs at Stetson and some of its other schools took place more than two years ago, and maintained that relations between the District, Edison and its school communities have improved dramatically. Tucker stressed that Edison is conscious of the “paramount importance” of safety and security: “You can’t learn if you are not safe and secure.”
Of the “Edison model” he said, “the good news is, we think it’s working.”
Tucker pointed to increased test scores at its schools and the movement of all five of its middle schools off the “persistently dangerous schools” list, a No Child Left Behind initiative that reports on the number of serious incidents in a school.
Edison likewise claims progress at over 100 schools it runs nationally, but has lost contracts for over 40 others, where the company has been removed from its management role.
At the community meeting at Stetson, the District defended Edison’s performance in printed materials, stressing that Edison schools had one-third the number of arrests and 10 fewer assaults compared to last year.
That seemed lost on the parents who attended the community meeting. Each interviewed volunteered that they were afraid to send their children to school. But parent Donna Tyer seemed somewhat comforted by the community meeting.
“I think this is a good show of
faith on the part of the parents,”
she said.
But a spate of violent
incidents that the District itself has had to confront puts it on the spot in seeking to prevent sudden serious incidents inside and outside of schools. In the weeks before and after the Stetson rape, District schools have seen:
· A sexual attack by a fifth grader
on an 8-year-old third grader in the schoolyard
of Wilson Elementary School during a Police
Athletic League after-school program.
· A shooting of a 15-year-old student
a few blocks from Germantown High School.
· The shooting of four students
outside Strawberry Mansion High School,
one of whom died.
One solution promoted by schools CEO Paul Vallas is placing armed Philadelphia police officers at some Philadelphia schools. He has recently proposed positioning officers outside school entrances, increasing police patrols of the immediate area before and after school, and sending probation officers and police to visit the homes of troublesome students in the evenings. For that effort, Vallas wants the city to seek a $5 million federal grant for about 40 city police officers.
Mayor John Street has expressed strong disagreement with Vallas’ idea to place armed officers at schools and resisted deploying additional police to regularly patrol them. He has announced his own initiative, to launch this month and called "Operation Safe Schools." Its aim would be more collaboration and information-sharing between the Police Department, schools, and city agencies. Features would include a hotline for anonymous tips and a computer database that would track problem areas.
Some advocates point to another solution
– smaller schools. Stetson, Strawberry
Mansion, and Germantown are all schools
with populations approaching or exceeding
1,000 students.
“The research is very clear, that
the smaller the school, the more significant
the reduction in incidents of violence,”
said Fran Sugarman, Coordinator of the
Philadelphia chapter of the Cross
City Campaign for Urban School Reform.
“The feeling of community among
students and teachers make a significance
different in personalization and the attention
students are getting.”
“Something has to be done to make these schools smaller, and this really emphasizes the importance of our student-led effort to get smaller high schools,” Sugarman added.
Contact Notebook staff writer
Sheila Simmons at 215-951-0330 x156 or
sheilas@thenotebook.org.