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Legal and Safety Issues for Teachers
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Three teachers robbed at gunpoint at a Moreno Valley elementary school
10:00 pm pdt on wednesday, august 19, 2009
Education officials plan to re-evaluate security procedures after a gunman stormed a teacher's lounge at a Moreno Valley elementary school early Wednesday morning and robbed three teachers.
Officials want to enhance security procedures, including adding security patrols and closing certain access points to schools, said Superintendent Rowena Lagrosa, of the Moreno Valley Unified School District.
Box Springs Elementary School Principal Sam Stager said the man entered the open-access campus at 6:50 a.m., before students arrived. The man got into the teacher's lounge from a side or rear entrance where he robbed the teachers at gunpoint, demanding their purses, Stager said.
The women gave him their purses and he ran off the campus carrying a small handgun.
No one was injured and no arrests had been made as of Wednesday evening.
Police are not sure if he ran through the neighborhood or to a waiting car on Athens Drive, which runs past the school and homes, Stager said.
Moreno Valley police officers arrived within minutes after a school custodian called them but the suspect had already fled.
The three teachers were sent home for the day; substitutes took their places. The school district's crisis management counseling team was also called to the campus, Lagrosa said.
Parents were notified of the incident through an automated call system, Lagrosa said. Students were not told of the robbery and continued their normal school day.
"It's terrifying. We're a very close-knit community and school," Lagrosa said. "We're just in disbelief that this could happen. We want this to be a safe haven for our students and staff."
The Moreno Valley Educators Association was unavailable for comment.
Moreno Valley's elementary schools have a private security firm that patrols the area after hours until 6:30 a.m. One school resource officer patrols each of the district's middle schools and each high school has a full-time Moreno Valley police officer on campus.
| Behind the story | |
 • Overview oflefal and safety issues |
Schools, once thought of as the safest place for children, are no longer the impenetrable havens they once were. In an era where school shootings, beatings, rapes and campus riots have become not only reality, but for some the norm, campus safety is no joke.
Some experts say schools have become too vigilant. Others say not enough. And school officials nationwide are erring on the side of caution, taking any and all threats the only way they can seriously.
In San Bernardino, two second-grade boys at North Park Elementary School, the same school where a first-grader brought an unloaded gun to school last month, were disciplined this week for making drive-by threats despite the fact both are too young to drive.
At Victor Valley High School, a 16-year-old girl reported she was jumped by a dozen other girls this week on the way to class.
In the Coachella Valley, a 10-year-old girl was raped in the bathroom of her elementary school, an attack that has rattled school officials and caused major changes in the campus' day-to-day operations.
Security cameras have gone up.
Visitors must sign in and out and wear badges.
Reports of terrorist threats, no matter how seemingly insignificant, are always investigated.
Herb Fischer, superintendent of schools for San Bernardino County, said any and all threats to student safety will be taken seriously by school officials. He also said schools are entering a new era of openness and striving to let parents know whenever dangerous or suspicious incidents occur.
"With heightened awareness of school-safety issues nationwide, I applaud them for that," Fischer said. "They are working to assure parents that our schools are being as open as possible and at the same time as cautious as possible."
A number of school safety summits sponsored by local legislators have been held in the past few months. The county Probation Office has developed a special gang-intervention plan and has made a commitment to work with all county schools, Fischer said.
Gary Underwood, police chief of the San Bernardino City Unified School District, said that since Columbine, the universal police doctrine for responding to a shooter on campus has changed.
In addition to surveillance cameras and controlling who has access to campus, stronger ties to school psychologists have been adopted in order to evaluate kids who may be troubled.
Controlling visitor access can be more difficult in Western states where schools are laid out in an open, sprawling fashion, as opposed to East Coast schools, which are typically built in one building with several levels.
Newer campuses typically have only one entry point, which is easier to police, as opposed to older schools, which may have several, Underwood said.
All threats taken seriously
Two second-grade boys at North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino were disciplined this week for making threats off-campus about a drive-by shooting, district officials said.
District spokeswoman Linda Hill confirmed the students were disciplined but would not elaborate, citing student privacy laws.
"We want our parents to know the district takes any threat to students' safety seriously," Hill said.
School board trustee Tony Dupre, speaking from a conference in Las Vegas, said he was unaware of any incidents at the elementary school but that the district must respond swiftly to threats under the Education Code, even if no weapon is seen.
"We cannot take that lightly, and the student will be ultimately recommended for suspension or possible expulsion," Dupre said.
The district can be held liable if threats are made, it takes no action, and then a student later acts on the threats.
Trustee Elsa Valdez, whose 6-year-old granddaughter attends North Park, said that as a veteran educator, the incident involving the two boys disturbed her.
"We had to look into it," she said. "I was concerned about it. And if there were rumors here like at Beaumont, I would probably keep my granddaughter home as well. As a parent or grandparent, you can't afford to take any chances."
At Victor Valley High, a 16-year-old student claimed she was jumped by a dozen or so other students on her way to class. The school resource officer is investigating the attack, said sheriff's spokeswoman Shelley Williams.
"The girl claimed she was jumped by other girls, and we've investigated," said Principal Elvin Momon. "So far, it looks like two girls fighting and nothing more."
The community's issues sometimes end up on campus and educators don't know what they will get on a daily basis, he said. Administrators and campus security must listen to and look for signs that are out of the ordinary and be prepared to respond to almost anything.
But if someone says they'll bring a gun onto campus, all bets are off, Momon said
"We're gonna react," he said.
Doing things differently
At Palm View Elementary in Coachella, no student goes to the restroom alone. A school employee has been dispatched to monitor the bathrooms full time.
A 10-year-old girl reported that she was sexually assaulted in a bathroom during school hours within the last 10 days, said Principal Maria Grieve. The Riverside County Sheriff's Department, which is investigating the incident, have no suspects yet.
"We have totally changed the way we do things," Grieve said. The school district is providing a full-time security guard for the campus. More yard supervisors have been added, and two will stay throughout the school day.
Parents have also volunteered to monitor the office door to ensure campus visitors sign in. That's in addition to it being monitored by a school secretary.
"There's been a shift in our society and parental responsibility almost to the point of us raising their children for them," Grieve said. "We have some parents who see us as a baby-sitting service. That's why more of them (children) are joining gangs. They want to belong to a family, and gangs become a substitute family."
Widespread campus violence
Violence has plagued the region's school campuses in the last six months, and it is not limited to shootings. Among the incidents was a fight at A.B. Miller High School in January in which 20 students were detained by police. Pacific High School has seen a spate of fighting since the beginning of the school year.
On Jan. 9, rumors kept roughly half of Beaumont High School's 1,500 students from coming to school after Internet-chatroom conversations indicated some students might bring firearms to school. A month later, shots were fired in a Beaumont neighborhood, causing a short lockdown at five nearby schools. Last month, Beaumont High School had its worst fight in recent history when a brawl broke out after a school assembly.
"We've become a society very afraid of violence, and it's hit close to home in this general area," said Karen Poppen, an assistant superintendent for the Beaumont Unified School District. "This is not just a school problem, it's a community problem. The question is how do we come together and how are we going to solve this?"
Last fall, the school district began working with Beaumont police, and training for district security officers has improved along with the level of security as a whole, Poppen said.
Earlier this month, interim Superintendent Nicholas Ferguson began holding community task force meetings to discuss issues like campus safety and student discipline.
Such problems are new for the district, Ferguson said.
"We're not accustomed to that kind of thing," he said.
Jerry Sturmer, director of educational safety and security for the Rialto Unified School District, said he has noticed more physicality between students and an increase in gang activity.
"We must react to violence," he said. " We need more resources, right now they are extremely limited."
Sturmer is frustrated about applying for a competitive five-year $500,000 state grant that would help with campus safety needs. Only 35 grants are being offered.
He is also angry that the federal government is cutting Safe and Drug-free schools money by 21 percent next year, money that pays for school resource officer anti-drug and anti-violence programs.
"Everybody says we need safe schools," he said. "But nobody wants to pay for it." (So District Superintendents feel it necessary to lie and cover up. In the end making it harder to obtain the very financial help they needed in the first place );I, Praetorian
Changing times
Ever since Columbine and 9/11, in some ways school officials have "sometimes overreacted," said Valdez, a professor of race and ethnic relations at Cal State San Bernardino.
"We've all been told all the signs were there, but no one paid attention," she said. "Are these kids going to go and carry out what they say they will? Who knows?"
Children are bombarded every day with violent images on television, movies and video games, and society is becoming desensitized to violence, Valdez said.
Times have changed.
Students in the '60s and '70s would get into trouble, fighting and drinking beer and smoking, but it was different from today, Valdez said.
"You didn't ever hear about the same type of vicious crimes like shootings and rapes," she said. "And there was never anybody getting raped in the bathroom."
Staff Writer Mike Cruz contributed to this report.
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