March 14, 2008
Proactive safety measures worked out at PHS
From PPS’ Cliff Davis: Progress in the Petersburg City Public Schools to achieve the goal of a “World Class School Division” takes many forms: higher academic achievement, greater efficiency, and a safe and secure school environment. Following last Friday’s disturbance at Petersburg High School, district administrators have teamed up with the Petersburg Bureau of Police and Petersburg City Public Schools security staff to ensure that the school is as safe a learning environment as it can possibly be.
(cont.)
The schools lockers have all been checked this week. Security checkpoints have been established to inspect book bags. In fact, a complete security check (via metal detectors) has been conducted of all students entering the building, ever since Friday’s disturbance. The building floor plan has also been carefully examined to pinpoint where staff need to be to ensure safety. Administrators have also talked to students to explain why the measures are necessary.
“Last week was unfortunate but it taught us a lot of things. This has brought a lot of people to the table. Together, we’ve strategized some of the security measures that we needed to enact, in order to do a better job,” said Dr. James M. Victory, Superintendent.
Petersburg High School has several metal detectors in place, and has had them for years. These detectors are portable and are used at student entry points. One is in place at the front office, where students enter who are tardy. All students must pass through detectors to enter the school.
The school also has several security wands available for use.
The proactive measures for security enacted this month do not involve new equipment or the hiring of additional personnel; therefore, there is no cost to the district.
Russell Lawrence, Director of Facilities for the Petersburg City Public Schools, oversees security of district facilities. “For security reasons, we cannot release details about how often or in what manner locker checks and other security checks will be conducted or the number of persons assigned specifically to security. We are working in conjunction with the Petersburg Police and that is why some of their officers were at Petersburg High School this morning.”
Our investigation in connection with Friday’s incident is continuing and will continue until it is decided on by the School Board.
Everyone needs to show up at the school board and perhaps also city council and demand that the kids not be allowed to have CELL PHONES with them during class.
Sure some parents are going to scream “But I need to be able to get a hold of my child!” or “My child needs to be able to contact me!” but that doesn’t hold water.
People are spoiled these days by instant communication. There’s pretty much no situation where calling and contacting your child through the school office or your child going to the office if they need to contact you is a problem.
Schools regulate actions and items that are “disruptive to the learning environment” on a regular basis and there’s no way having a phone in class can be a good thing.
I am totally with you, commonsensedude.
I have been in work environments where cell-phones are banned from adult employees (even rather responsible ones). Certainly this is a no-brainer for schools.
I believe use of cell phones is one of the primary concerns of the superintendent. On the day of the bomb threat, it was revealed that massive texting between students was in process, causing chaos and rivalry to ensue.
Such messages were shown to the superintendent and he vowed to address that issue.
Petersburg’s public schools are the reason we have 42% illiteracy in the city and will never live up to its motto “delivering what we promise, a quality education.” How many more generations of kids are we going to lose, condenmed to be part of this statistic before we make a radical change? This is just another rule/standard that will not be enforced, just another bandaid on the sucking chest wound. The public schools are academically bankrupt. Stop the bleeding. Shut them down.
Petersburg will never have a world class school division as long as you have board members who continually antagonize students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Many teachers are looking for new jobs after the fiasco with this year’s graduation time change. How inconsiderate to change the time of graduation without notifying the parents. Parents received a recorded phone message today, May 15, 2008, about the time change from 6pm to 10am. Seems low class, not world class!!!
“Petersburg will never have a world class school division as long as you have board members who continually antagonize students, parents, teachers, and administrators.”
Sounds bad.
You got any more examples?
The school system took the following steps to notify students and parents of the graduation time change:
I would like to comment in this regard. PPN receives PSAs from, e.g., the school system, along with the traditional news outlets. Depending on when we at PPN check the inbox, these announcements can go up as quick as immediately (not that they all do!). In contrast, print media for example may take a day or more to get the same announcement into hardcopy. I point this out because, if at any given moment someone should see a piece of information on this site but not in other venues, that should not be construed as evidence that the news hasn’t been sent out for wide distribution. Instead, it might just mean that the folks who wish to get the word out are reaching out to what are various available media in an effort to get the word out as soon as possible to as many people as possible, but that each of these media has different constraints its faces re: when such announcements will be published.
You will note that the graduation time change announcement went up on May 12 in the P-I, and May 15 on in the RTD.