Newsroom | Archive 2006
Riverside County Superintendent of Schools
completes two days of hearings on safe schools
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| Dr. David Long, right, chairs the federal Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Advisory Committee, meeting with Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education |
Dr. David Long, Riverside County Superintendent of Schools, recently completed two days of hearings on school safety in Washington D.C. as chairman of the federal Department of Education’s Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Advisory Committee.
Long and the 11 members of the panel, including educators, school safety experts, and public-health advocates, discussed the issue of “persistently dangerous schools” as defined by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, with Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education.
The Education Department wants to work with other federal agencies to give educators more information about the danger signs they should look for in students’ behavior, Spellings said.
They want to tell educators how to best intervene to head off trouble.
In addition to possibly changing the “persistently dangerous” label, committee members suggested that the NCLB law should encourage schools to identify student behaviors-such as pervasive bullying-that could lead to shootings or other criminal episodes later.
Spellings has asked the advisory committee to recommend how to improve the law’s school safety and anti-drug programs, asking specifically for its ideas on the dangerous-schools section of the law by the end of the year.
The label of “persistently dangerous school” itself “has a very negative connotation,” Long said. “The name presents a problem because it puts a hurdle in the way in the minds of educators.”
For information contact:
Rick Peoples,
Public Information Officer
Telephone: (951) 826-6642
Fax: (951) 826-6199
rpeoples@rcoe.us
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