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SFUSD wary of arming staff
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
SFUSD wary of arming staff
BY NICK DRIVER
Of The Examiner Staff
Guns shouldn't be in school, not even if it's the good guys who are toting them.
That's the discussion San Francisco Unified School District officials are having about the newly created position of chief safety officer.
The position, which has been in the works for the two years, would have the SFUSD work with the Police Department to create an administrative role to oversee the many programs designed to protect kids as they learn -- a top priority in an era of school shootings, which have affected campuses across the country.
"We didn't want some retired FBI agent who didn't understand schools," said Board of Education President Jill Wynns.
Police Lt. Vivian Williams seems like the dream candidate: an 18-year SFPD veteran, she has been the officer in charge of the Juvenile Division for the past five years and helps run the School Cares program.
The only problem, says Wynns, is that Williams wants to carry a gun.
As a police officer, she's supposed to. But as an administrator, does she need to?
Teachers and SFUSD board members don't think so. And they are not alone.
In a meeting last week at the Fairmont Hotel, the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education said protecting kids is not about guns, it's about counseling kids and assessing risks. The seminar was formed to train educators and law enforcement how to spot the hate and stop it before it becomes violent.
"Ours is a system that works because of its people," not because some officer takes a bullet for the president, said Special Agent George Luczko, of the Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center. "If someone approaches with a gun, that means our system has already failed."
That system failed 16-year-old Charles "Andy" Williams, who was sentenced to 50 years last week for killing two classmates during a shooting rampage at his San Diego high school in March 2001. It was neighborhood bullies, defense attorneys said, that pushed a depressed and alienated Williams over the edge.
Bullies and the bullied are a big problem on high school campuses. But Luczko believes with counseling and teachers trained to spot problems on campus -- like the ones facing kids like Williams -- violence can be curtailed.
San Francisco has a variety of school counseling and peer resource programs, some of them funded by the state after the 1999 Columbine, Colo., shootings, and local educators want to keep safety a priority. But they aren't willing to use a gun to do it.
The SFUSD is to vote at an Aug. 27 meeting on starting negotiations with the San Francisco Police Department about the new position.
E-mail: ndriver@sfexaminer.com
http://www.sfexaminer.com/news/default.jsp?story=n.schoolsafety.0819w
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
BY NICK DRIVER
Of The Examiner Staff
Guns shouldn't be in school, not even if it's the good guys who are toting them.
That's the discussion San Francisco Unified School District officials are having about the newly created position of chief safety officer.
The position, which has been in the works for the two years, would have the SFUSD work with the Police Department to create an administrative role to oversee the many programs designed to protect kids as they learn -- a top priority in an era of school shootings, which have affected campuses across the country.
"We didn't want some retired FBI agent who didn't understand schools," said Board of Education President Jill Wynns.
Police Lt. Vivian Williams seems like the dream candidate: an 18-year SFPD veteran, she has been the officer in charge of the Juvenile Division for the past five years and helps run the School Cares program.
The only problem, says Wynns, is that Williams wants to carry a gun.
As a police officer, she's supposed to. But as an administrator, does she need to?
Teachers and SFUSD board members don't think so. And they are not alone.
In a meeting last week at the Fairmont Hotel, the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education said protecting kids is not about guns, it's about counseling kids and assessing risks. The seminar was formed to train educators and law enforcement how to spot the hate and stop it before it becomes violent.
"Ours is a system that works because of its people," not because some officer takes a bullet for the president, said Special Agent George Luczko, of the Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center. "If someone approaches with a gun, that means our system has already failed."
That system failed 16-year-old Charles "Andy" Williams, who was sentenced to 50 years last week for killing two classmates during a shooting rampage at his San Diego high school in March 2001. It was neighborhood bullies, defense attorneys said, that pushed a depressed and alienated Williams over the edge.
Bullies and the bullied are a big problem on high school campuses. But Luczko believes with counseling and teachers trained to spot problems on campus -- like the ones facing kids like Williams -- violence can be curtailed.
San Francisco has a variety of school counseling and peer resource programs, some of them funded by the state after the 1999 Columbine, Colo., shootings, and local educators want to keep safety a priority. But they aren't willing to use a gun to do it.
The SFUSD is to vote at an Aug. 27 meeting on starting negotiations with the San Francisco Police Department about the new position.
E-mail: ndriver@sfexaminer.com
http://www.sfexaminer.com/news/default.jsp?story=n.schoolsafety.0819w
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
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