Norfolk Alternative School Voices Out Safety Concerns

This is the kind of action that I like hearing about. I read about a report on the safety problems at the Madison Career Center, an alternative school in Virginia. This school is home to middle school and high school students who have serious behavior problems. There are also some students pursuing a special GED program in the school.

So what is going on at the Madison Career Center? Recently, a group of “concerned teachers, staff and students” released a booklet which is 185 pages long. This booklet details the unrest and violence that has been going on in the school. Incidents are varied and include the throwing of chairs and tables at faculty members. The allegations of the people behind the booklet point to one main thing: that the authorities are not doing enough to ensure the safety of the students and staff in the school.

If you read my previous post, you will know that the 2009 School Safety Index has just been released. As such, this kind of report is not really that surprising to me. However, the fact that the students and staff have banded together to come up with a booklet is alarming in itself. I think that it is not wrong to assume that things are really not good at Madison Career Center.

On one hand, it is a positive thing that the people at the center of the issue are aware of the problem. Even better, they are not simply taking things sitting down. And their actions are actually bearing some fruit: the city council has taken notice of their booklet and is asking Stephen C. Jones, the superintendent, to explain.

The school board has not been silent on the issue as well. School Board Chairman Barry Bishop has released a statement wherein he admitted that the school has been facing problems. However, he also questioned the motives of the people behind the booklet. He said that perhaps, the motives are not that pure. He was also quick to take responsibility for the problems at the school and said that the bottom line is that they have work to do.

With this kind of attitude, I cannot help but feel that something positive may very well come out of this incident. Perhaps there might be hard feelings because of the booklet, but if they are all willing to work on the problem, solutions can be found. And that is what really matters, right?

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