Mum's the word on Edgewood Elementary incident
Baltimore school officials are not answering questions about an incident at Edgewood Elementary last week where a child was allegedly tied to a chair. Brent Jones, my colleague and former partner on the city schools beat, asked school police chief Toby Goodwin about it last night at a City Council education committee meeting. Goodwin would confirm only that school police had turned over a child abuse case to the Department of Juvenile Services and the city police department.
Goodwin and the system's executive director of student support, Jonathan Brice, updated council members on the new school safety hotline, 410-396-SAFE. Between November, when the hotline started, and February, school police fielded 303 calls, with about 56 percent related to bullying/harassment, Brent reports. Very few calls involved the issue we all know is a huge problem: gangs. Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said she'd like to see anonymous text messaging (oh, no! text messaging!) added as another way for students to communicate possible problems in their schools. A similar system is in place in Broward County, Fla.
Students made between 60 and 70 percent of the hotline calls. A breakdown of the categories:
Physical violence: 20 percent
Gangs: 7 percent
Drugs: 6 percent
Property: 4 percent
Weapons: 3 percent
Homelessness: 1 percent
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
Sara-
Do you know if the hotline provides translators or operators in other languages?
We have had a mounting problem at our school with harassment and bullying of international students, many of whom are not fluent or even conversational in English. I know this service might help them immensely.
Posted by: David Ortiz | March 12, 2009 3:08 PM
Sounds to me like a use of restraints in an educational setting, which seems to always be associated with special needs kids. There's a petition to end the use of aversives, restraints and seclusion here.
Posted by: a parent | March 12, 2009 3:26 PM
David: Translation in Spanish or another language? There's a sign in Spanish in the school board room promoting the hotline, so I'm confident that Spanish translation would be available. I'm checking with the system on other languages.
Posted by: Sara Neufeld | March 12, 2009 4:00 PM