Jorge Werthein

Ackerman: Youth violence a public health issue

By Kristen A. Graham

Inquirer Staff Writer

Philadelphia School District Superintendent Arlene Ackerman says she goes to bed angry every night and wakes up angry every morning.
There were about 15,000 violent and nonviolent incidents in city public schools last year - down 5 percent from the year before, but still far too many, the schools chief said in an interview yesterday.
"Fifteen thousand is not something we should be proud of," she said.
Occasionally, public outrage bubbles up - in December over the beating of Asian students at South Philadelphia High, this week when a mob of high school students threw punches and damaged property in Center City. But that's not enough, the superintendent said.
"Absent the race thing, what happened at South Philly happens on a regular basis throughout this city, and there is no public outcry about what has become commonplace," Ackerman said. "There's a level of tolerance here that has amazed me."
Last school year, the district had 5,715 serious offenses, including weapons incidents and assaults - down 15 percent from 6,703 the previous year.
But 25 of its schools are considered "persistently dangerous," so unsafe that parents have the right to send their children elsewhere. That number, a state designation based on the federal No Child Left Behind law, was up from 20 the year before.
When she arrived in Philadelphia in June 2008, Ackerman said, she was shocked that teachers listed fixing school violence as one of their top three priorities for a new contract.
"In all my 41 years in education, I've never had a teachers' union that lists that as one of their top three bargaining issues," she said. "Violence impacts how teachers teach, how children learn."
When the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers ratified its contract last month, teachers rose and cheered when officials announced that the pact contained a section that expressly permitted them to defend themselves against violent students.
Ackerman said youth violence, in school and out, is a public-health issue. If 15,000 cases of measles broke out in city schools, she said, "we would come together as an adult community and treat it. It would not be a fix the school system could undertake by itself."
The superintendent and Mayor Nutter spoke Wednesday morning, the day after the new mob incident. What, they said, could they do?
There are no concrete answers yet.
"We're going to get together and come up with a strategy," Ackerman said. "I know one of my strategies was to pull together community groups and the city to think about what we have to do to address youth violence."
That same morning, Ackerman said, she met with the community group Mothers in Charge to start the work. She also plans to embrace a nonviolence effort by the student organizing group Philadelphia Student Union and the district's citywide student government, she said.
"It's not the schools' problem alone. It's a community issue, and it won't be solved with more police officers in the school," said Ackerman.
When she visits Central High, the superintendent said, she sees students racing to get to school and reluctant to leave. But most neighborhood high schools do not have programs that hook teens and keep them invested.
"There's no reason for them to stay at many schools," Ackerman said. "To me, we've got to make the schools the hub of learning for a community."
For many city students, home is not a safe place. And many fear coming to school.
Violence, the city's staggering truancy rate - officials estimate that on any given day, 12,000 students skip school because they simply don't feel like going - and a high dropout rate are all connected, Ackerman said.
And she wants people to be angry about all of it.
"I'm going to keep being in people's faces," Ackerman said. "I'm not going to stop."

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