Written for Bacon’s Rebellion by James C. Sherlock

Better late than never. Truly.

The Daily Press reported today that the Newport News school board has secured funding for state-of-the-art metal detectors.

State-of-the-art means systems that can detect weapons without the long lines and delays we associate with such systems.

As an example, a 125-year-old company, Kenton Brothers, offers Evolve Technology that combines artificial intelligence with digital sensors that they claim can screen visitors and students 10 times faster that older methods.

Kenton Brothers inevitably has competitors with similar technologies. Perhaps better ones.  These systems won’t keep teachers or kids from getting assaulted in schools, but should reduce knifings and shootings.

Which is something.

But to restore order, metal detectors must be paired with old-school zero tolerance discipline. The long-adopted, utterly failed Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) discipline system must be scrapped in Newport News schools.

Which is something else.

As I wrote in an earlier article, Newport News schools in general have been no strangers to weapons offenses.

Schools with a carat (<) on that list had between one and eight weapons offenses. In one year. Actual numbers are not reported because it is assumed possible to personally identify the offender and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) thus requires the non-specific indicator. Look at the ones that had nine and ten. In one year.

Richneck was no exception.

PBIS. Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), the empathetic discipline system meant to break the “school-to-prison pipeline,” has been in place in Newport News schools for years.

PBIS is

designed to impact school culture by shifting attention to positive behavior and successful learning systems.

Sixty-four of 132 school divisions in Virginia have adopted it. Let’s examine some results.

1. It has proved no impediment to mayhem in Newport News and other urban adopters in Virginia.

2. UVa researchers examined a Northam VDOE hypothesis that PBIS would improve attendance.

This study examined the impact of a state policy requiring that any school with a habitual truancy rate of 8% or higher to be trained in Tier 1 school-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SW-PBIS).

Taken together, results suggested that the policy … had little to no impact on student outcomes.

Short version: PBIS, meant to make school more attractive to students, did not.

3. As for the “successful learning systems” part, let’s call that intriguing.

Divisions with PBIS discipline systems include:

• Danville

• Franklin

• Harrisonburg

• Martinsville

• Newport News

• Norfolk

• Petersburg

• Portsmouth

Chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed. Schools have become more dangerous. Learning has, to be kind, not improved. Teachers are fleeing in droves.

Listen to a teacher interviewed by The Daily Press.

Julianne Marse, an elementary school teacher at Newport News for 20 years and an administrator for 11, said she retired in 2019 because of student behavior concerns. As an assistant principal at the time, misbehaving students often were sent to her office. She said she has been hit, kicked and spit on by students.

“I would come home with bruises constantly,” she said.

She said requests for help from her principal, executive director and the special education department were often ignored.

“Basically, it was just, ‘Figure out yourself, there’s nothing we can do,’” Marse said.

This sentiment has been echoed in recent days among teachers online and in conversations with the Daily Press.

Richneck is an average elementary school in an underfunded, poor-performing, violence-prone division.

So, now the division is putting up metal detectors.

Newport News Public Schools will become an underfunded, poor-performing, violence-prone division with metal detectors.

Bottom line. The school board cannot immediately fix the underfunded problem. But scrapping PBIS in favor of zero tolerance will offer at least a chance to bring both safety and a supportive learning and teaching environment. And get most teachers and students to return. Which is not a done deal.

VDOE under the Youngkin administration has wisely discontinued previous administrations’ support of PBIS for the best possible reasons: It sounded good, but hasn’t worked.

If the current Newport News school board doesn’t follow suit, the city needs a new one that will.

Supporters of PBIS will need to step up and answer to readers here and to the Newport News school board:

• why the mayhem in Newport News Public Schools is unrelated to its system of discipline; and

• why teacher retention is unrelated to dangerous schools.

Can’t wait.

Update.  Jan 13 at 13:10

The Washington Post reports

In the hours before a Virginia 6-year-old allegedly shot his teacher, a school staffer had searched the child’s backpack looking for a weapon, a school district spokesperson said Thursday.

The search, revealed for the first time during a meeting school officials held for parents, was conducted after a report was made that the student may have had a weapon, the spokesperson said. No weapon was found.

The district spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment about criticisms of school disciplinary procedures Thursday evening. (emphasis added)

So, “a school staffer searched the child’s back pack.” Nonsense.

We are asked to believe a six-year-old kid, having extensively studied criminology and having planned the perfect crime,

• smuggled a gun into school;

• figured out that someone had ratted him out;

• hid it before his backpack was searched by “a school staffer;”

• having fooled said adult school staffer, retrieved it in accordance with his well thought out plan; and

• shot his teacher.

When such accountings cannot be true, they are either false or incomplete or both.

I’ll go with both.