Safer schools? Stop coddling the violent students

Oct. 7, 2007
By Tom Ferrick Jr.
For The Inquirer

Meet Jack Stollsteimer, the Mr. Lonely of the Philadelphia public schools.

Stollsteimer is the safe schools advocate, a position created by the state legislature to monitor and improve safety and discipline in the Philly schools. The thinking was that a watchdog was needed because of the district’s, um, spotty record in this area. 

Spotty as in: denying there is a problem, cooking the numbers when it can’t deny it anymore, and sweeping cases of violence and misbehavior under the carpet when it can.

Spotty as in refusing to expel or transfer dangerous students. I’m not talking kids who get unruly. I am talking kids who bring weapons to schools.

As Stollsteimer pointed out recently, there were 926 students who brought weapons to school in the 2005-2006 school year. State law mandates expulsion for that offense. Only two were expelled — and that was double the number expelled in the previous school year, when one (count ’em, one) student was expelled.

Stollsteimer has argued that if the district won’t expel students, then it should at least remove them from their schools, where they bully fellow students, diss teachers and create mayhem.

An alternative does exist. They are called, aptly, AEPs: Alternative Educational Placement schools. (Translated: disciplinary schools.) Most of these schools were created during the Paul Vallas regime, and enrollment is about 3,300, which is 500 below capacity.

If the district had a functioning and effective disciplinary system, and if it removed students found guilty of Level II (i.e. serious offenses) from schools, it would need many more AEP spaces than it currently has.

But it keeps the number of AEP placements down by having a disciplinary system that is — in the judgment of independent observers — dysfunctional and ineffective. As a recent study pointed out, 79 out of every 100 Level II offenders remain in their schools.

The district is not planning to expand AEP. In fact, it poised to reduce the number of spaces available. The legislature, which provided money for this program, recently cut its subsidy from $22 million to $14 million and the district is studying … well, I guess you could call it alternatives to alternative placements.

When Stollsteimer got wind of that last month, he went before the School Reform Commission and urged members not to cut the AEP budget.

As Stollsteimer reminded the commission: “Your first duty is to protect the lives and safety of the children and staff who work and learn in our city’s public schools.”

The district was not amused. As acting CEO Tom Brady put it: “Statements like that aren’t particularly helpful in trying to fix particular parts of the program.”

As for the Rendell administration, it wants the district to balance its budget. Period. No further questions, please. If that means cutting alternative placements, then so be it.

Stollsteimer’s reward for speaking truth to power? He’s considered a pariah by the educational powers that be. They just want him and his office to go away.

He tells the truth and they act as if he passed gas at High Mass.

Like I said, Mr. Lonely.

By the way, the district has created a “task force” to study the issue. The state is harrumphing about how further study must be done on the efficacy and efficiency of AEPs.

My interpretation of these actions: They intend to reduce AEP placements, and they have turned on the fog machine to provide cover for their actions.

Let me try to cut through the fog with these observations:

The district will never succeed in gaining public support if it allows violent and chronically disruptive students to remain in the schools.

The 5 percent who cause the most of the problems ruin it for the 95 percent who do not. Anyone who has been to school knows how the bullies, bad actors and wild kids can harm a school’s culture. They are the educational equivalent of terrorists: a few can do a lot of damage.

Since there have been few expulsions, the district must act swiftly and decisively to remove serious offenders from the schools and put them in AEPs. It will help the schools by removing the terrorists. Studies show it also often helps the offenders, by giving them a more structured setting and individual attention.

In other words, the district — with the help of the state — should be working to increase the number of AEP spots in Philadelphia, not reduce them.

It should also consider the (apparently unthinkable) policy of expelling the baddest of the bad actors. It would send a message that it is serious about discipline.

If you hear of any policy other than more AEP spots and better discipline — even if it is dressed up in polysyllabic verbiage or looks of sincere concern on the part of education officials (a specialty of the SRC) — you should not be deceived.

It is just more equine fecal matter on the issue of school discipline from the people who run the schools.