New Britain area schools look to prevent violence among students

by Christine Moyer

WASHINGTON - A camera surveillance system monitors the 400,000 square feet of New Britain High School. The doors at Rocky Hill High School lock after the students arrive. But despite widespread public concern about school violence across the country, New Britain has had to reduce security at its public schools.

"We don't have the money," said school Superintendent Doris Kurtz. "We want to prevent violence, but we've had to cut back on security."

With a $4.2 million budget cut this year, the New Britain school district is suffering from a money crunch. That it is affecting the protection of students "is a dilemma," Kurtz said

Kurtz said the district eliminated 69 jobs this year and is unable to bolster its security force.

"We don't perceive violence as a problem in our schools," Kurtz said, "but we would like to have more security because the high school and the middle school are overcrowded."

Thomas Reale, principal of New Britain High School, said he has just seven guards to protect the 3,000 students at the state's largest public school. Reale said he would like to hire more guards -- the school has about 200 more students than it had last year - but he has no money to do so.

Rocky Hill High School principal Robert Pitocco said he does not have problems with weapons or gangs, just the occasional fight.

Rocky Hill has fewer than 700 students and is touched by fewer big-city problems than New Britain High School, Pitocco said.

He said his school employs no guards and depends solely on two paid hall monitors to prevent violence. "They're not officers," Pitocco said. "But they act as the eyes and the ears of the administration."

At a hearing earlier this week in Denver, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce took up the issue of "persistently dangerous" schools. Members were concerned that states were not satisfactorily monitoring violence.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a massive overhaul of public education, states are required to report schools that are "persistently dangerous" so that parents can opt to move their children to safer schools.

But each state writes its own definition of "persistently dangerous," and only six have labeled schools as such, according to Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, a nonprofit group established to monitor and work to prevent school violence. Connecticut was not one of them.

Stephens said the "water mark" has been raised so high that most schools aren't labeled "persistently dangerous" even if they have suffered from repeat bouts of violence.

"Each state is given the opportunity to decide what a persistently dangerous school is," Stephens said. "But nobody wants to report, 'Look how badly I'm doing right now.' "

As a result, he said, some school districts are reducing their use of extreme disciplinary measures, such as expulsions, to avoid labeling schools as dangerous. Rather than expel students, some districts now give them in-school suspensions, Stephens said.

Kurtz defended Connecticut's avoidance of the "dangerous" label. "It's a small state and there area a lot of districts. So you can control things better in this area."

New Britain High School's principal, Reale, added: "New Britain is a city school. We're the largest school in the state. If we're not labeled, then it doesn't surprise me that other schools in the state aren't."