USVI: School violence has authorities wringing their hands

An assistant principal of Charlotte Amalie High School said Tuesday that police surveillance of the campus is inadequate to curb what he called a "huge discipline problem."

"We don't have enough coverage, we don't have enough people and we need to be more consistent about where we are patrolling," Assistant Principal Eric Blake said at a Parent Teacher Student Association meeting.

The school has been denied authorization from the Education Department to hire more campus monitors. CAHS, with 1,600 students, employs the same number of security staff members as does Ivanna Eudora Kean High School, which has 900 students.
...
The school's PTSA president, Shastri Hendricks, said that parents are feeling a sense of urgency as incidents of violence - such as a stabbing last week across from the school - continue to be reported.
...
Responding to questions from parents about the safety of the school, Blake said that many of the recent fights can be traced to a rivalry between residents of certain housing communities.

The Barbel Plaza stabbing across from CAHS last Friday, in which witnesses reported seeing about 10 boys in CAHS uniforms attack a man who was holding a baby, was rooted in one of those rivalries, he said.

Blake said several students suspected of involvement in the stabbing were asked to stay home from school pending a disciplinary hearing later this week in order to prevent more violence from breaking out.

The problem is not the number of guards, but the students themselves. If they and their parents are serious about education no extra guards would be required to improve the school's security climate. Putting an end to the violence doesn't necessarily require additional cost outlays but firm parenting, strict educational supervision, and the state's willingness to prosecute offenders, regardless of age. It is astonishing that "students suspected of involvement in the stabbing were [only] asked to stay home from school pending a disciplinary hearing." A stabbing is not just a school discipline matter, it is, and ought to be treated as a law enforcement matter. That way, the students involved are confronted with the seriousness of the law, their parents are encouraged to clamp down on them, and the state signals it will not tolerate lawlessness in the schools. Mollycoddling perpetrators of school violence and treating them with psychobabble only ensures more of the same, piled higher and deeper.