Students want weapon screenings
Advisory group seeks stricter school policies
Student leaders are pushing Boston public schools to force high schools to better screen students for weapons, given last week's gunfire in a high school and the recent spike in youth violence in the city.
The school district requires 15 of the city's 38 high schools to screen every student daily with walk-through metal detectors, but according to its own police chief only half of the schools with detectors check every teenager daily. And several use the detectors only on randomly picked days.
Members of the Boston Student Advisory Council, a group of 50 students representing high schools across the city, say they will submit a proposal to the Boston School Committee by March and focus their recommendations on setting stricter search policies in schools with metal detectors. They want high schools to use the detectors consistently and follow the district's rule of checking every student.
Too often when a metal detector beeps, students say, they are ushered through without further searches. They report seeing knives dropped during class or accidentally pulled out in the cafeteria by peers who reach into pockets for lunch money. Some of the student leaders said they also believe every school should have a metal detector, considering that the Roxbury alternative high school where a shot was fired last Monday did not use one.
''It should be done. A thorough search every day, no matter how long it takes," said Tara Jackson, 17, a member of the student advisory group who passes through a metal detector and has her bag searched every school day at Monument High School.
''[School officials] say, 'We're so safe. Nothing can get by us.' But people are bringing in BB guns. They're bringing in knives. It's crazy," Jackson said.
The school district monitors the schools' use of the metal detectors but does not check schools every day, said Michael Contompasis, chief operating officer of Boston public schools. The school police alert district officials when schools are not following school district policy, and they follow up by contacting the principal, he said.
Contompasis said that when he visits high schools, he makes note of whether they use the detectors.
''If we put them in, we expect them to be used," Contompasis said of walk-through detectors. ''[Some headmasters] still have not accepted the fact that we put them in there. I'm sure they cheat."
The Boston school system began installing the walk-through metal detectors five years ago to curb a weapons problem in certain high schools, he said. Contompasis said he does not think it is necessary for all city high schools to install the detectors.
Boston's headmasters, like high school principals nationwide, say they are trying to keep schools safe without turning them into prisons. Detectors, which few principals see as a fail-safe measure, can present a logistical nightmare, with school staff trying to usher in hundreds of students through a single line while checking for weapons, some said. Others have refused to install metal detectors, afraid the equipment would erode a school's atmosphere of trust. Boston's approach of installing detectors in trouble spots mirrors what the 100 largest school systems do, according to the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village, Calif.
So far this school year, the Boston school system has confiscated 191 weapons, including one gun -- a 2.7 percent increase over the number of weapons found through December last school year, according to district records. For the whole 2004-2005 school year, school police found 525 weapons, including eight guns. While most of the weapons were found in high schools, half of the confiscated guns last school year were from middle schools, and one came from an elementary school.
Even with detectors, students still find ways to sneak in weapons by entering through other doors, slipping them to friends through windows, and stashing them in bathrooms after school, principals say.
At Brighton High School, where students are selected at random to walk through the detector, one student brought a gun into school in 2004 on a day the metal detector was shut off, said Charles Skidmore, former Brighton High headmaster. Skidmore now is the principal at Arlington High School, which does not use metal detectors.
After the 2004 incident, Brighton used the metal detectors every day instead of every other day. But two months later, a second student brought a gun into the school by sneaking in early through the gym door, Skidmore said.
Keeping weapons out comes down to people skills and building relationships with students, said Chuck McAfee, headmaster at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, who greets all 1,650 students outside the school each morning before they file through a metal detector.
Michael Fung, headmaster at Charlestown High School, said he refuses to install a metal detector because he believes they send the wrong message. Instead, he relies on school police officers, including one who can tell if students are carrying knives by the way their pants hang, he said.
''We actually call her the metal detector," Fung said. ''I would rather depend on someone like her than a machine."
Linda Cabral, former headmaster at Hyde Park High who now leads the Community Academy of Science and Health, said the metal detectors are as effective as they can be. The school staff received training last year on how to operate the machines and search bags, she said.
''It's a really strong step in letting students know the level of tolerance a school has with regard to weapons," Cabral said. ''But we are school personnel, not police. And we do the best we can."
Students and parents say they want better assurances than that.
Like community leaders and police, they say they fear that the recent gun violence in Boston's neighborhoods could spill from streets into their classrooms; half of the people arrested this year on illegal gun possession and gun assault charges are 21 or younger, according to police statistics.
''As a mother, it scares the daylights out of me," said Jewel Cash Sr., whose daughter attends the Boston Latin Academy, which does not use metal detectors. ''School is not a haven anymore. Whether they want metal detectors or not, they need them."
Braulio Soto, a junior at The Engineering School, said that last school year at Hyde Park High School he saw a knife at least once every two or three weeks.
''We can't let this happen in the future. We have to learn from the past," said Soto, 16. ''The problem is that the staff members are not taking the beeps seriously."
Last Monday's gunfire at the Boston Day and Evening Academy, a Roxbury alternative school, has prompted discussion among parents, teachers, and students on whether to install a walk-through metal detector.
A student fired a gun in the boy's bathroom after an altercation with another student, blowing a small hole through the inner bathroom door, according to the school system's police report. No one was injured.
The school system sent three hand-held detectors to the 325-student school after the incident, but Headmaster Margaret Maccini said she does not plan to use them unless parents and the school community agree. The gunfire was the first gun incident in the school's 10-year history.
Half a dozen parents and students spoke against installing metal detectors or using hand-held wands during a school meeting on Thursday attended by roughly 20 people. They said the detectors would alienate students and make the tight-knit school appear more dangerous than it is.
''Our young people don't need to come to school in a prison mentality," said Eddie Ortega of Hyde Park, whose 19-year-old son attends the school.
Russell Nichols of the Globe staff contributed to this report.Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com. 