Too much time away from the classroom has strained the relationship among students during virtual-only school years prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, school officials told Baltimore City Council members on Thursday night. This is the second year of students returning to brick and mortar schools since the pandemic began in March 2020. Behavior issues and school violence increased last year, stemming from lack of social interaction among students, said Sonja Santelises, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools.
“We knew that everything from increased stress to the lack of skill in diverting and confronting conflict was even higher this year as we returned to school,” Santelises said.
To reduce school violence, the Baltimore City Public Schools system is working with the mayor’s office of neighborhood safety and engagement for a new violence intervention pilot program in three schools.
“A rubric has been established to determine where the need is for this sort of program based on levels of violence,” said Shantay Jackson, director of Baltimore City’s Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement.
The program will hire intervention workers and develop youth ambassadors to help mediate and resolve conflicts that could escalate into violence.
Jackson said the goal of the program is to promote, “healthy conflict transformation and mediation skills in those schools, and also changing those schools' community norms about the perception and the acceptability of violence.”
The hope is to implement the programs at all schools in the future.
In order to increase overall school safety and eliminate external threats, the school system plans to add advanced weapon detection systems and alarm systems for exterior doors.
Long-term and extended suspensions were up by 20% last school year in Baltimore City. There was an uptick in school arrests but when compared to the last full school year before the pandemic began, fewer students have been arrested across the district.
The majority of students told public school administrators in Baltimore that they feel safe in school. But that means 44% of students don’t feel safe, which is not something the school system wants to ignore, Santelises said.
Students reported not feeling safe because of bullying and that many of the suspensions this past school year involved use of a controlled substance. She said the data shows that the school system needs to take a holistic approach to address violence and safety.
“It's not just, how do we reduce violence in the large sense, but how do we actually get at some of the underlying challenges, Santelises said.
The goal is to move forward with a holistic approach focusing on building relationships, teaching restorative practices, conflict resolution and increasing extracurricular opportunities, said John Davis, chief of schools at Baltimore City Public Schools. Consistency and healthy routines matter, he said.
“So no matter where a child goes, if it's one classroom or another classroom, it's predictable what that child expects,” Davis said.
