Education Increasingly Entails Managing Crises

WESTMINSTER —  On an unusually warm morning last October, racial tensions boiled over at La Quinta High when an Asian youth stabbed a Latino teen in the back, while a crowd of students watched in horror.

Tensions between the two groups already were high, with Asian and Latino students having exchanged racial epithets for weeks. And because fears of more violence loomed among students, parents and teachers, Principal Mitchell Thomas knew he had to act fast.

In the past a principal might have tried to cover up the incident, but Thomas took the opposite approach. That day, he made five announcements over the school intercom to keep everyone abreast of police action and the victim’s condition. He also met with students, parents and his staff to discuss ways of easing racial strife and preventing further violence.

“I wanted to be open and I encouraged the faculty and students to ask questions,” Thomas said, adding that no other racial incidents have erupted since October. “At one time, the standard [for educators] was if you ignore a problem, it’ll go away. But if people are informed and treated with respect, things always work out better.”

Educators have long been confronted with crisis on school campuses. But as violence, racial discord, gangs, infectious illnesses and other societal problems escalate and spill into the schools, educators increasingly are faced with the difficult task of bringing order and averting further chaos in the aftermath of a traumatic incident. Because such incidents are becoming more commonplace, effective crisis response is proving to be a critical part of every educator’s job, determining whether problems will be resolved or allowed to spin out of control.

Indeed, just in the past week, two alleged gang members fired shots into the parking lot at Placentia’s El Camino Real Continuation High School shortly before lunch. Police said the suspects were aiming at rival gang members during last Thursday’s shooting.

On Jan. 30, near Newport Harbor High in Newport Beach, a 15-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of brandishing a gun at two students during an afternoon argument over a skateboard, police said.

As part of a statewide trend to build necessary coping skills, many Orange County educators have taken part in various crisis response training programs in recent years. In the fall of 1994, representatives from each of Orange County’s 28 school districts participated in a state-funded crisis response program and subsequently trained other employees in their districts.

“In the times we live in with drugs and gangs, people have to know what to do,” said Nancy Hugo of the Orange County Department of Education, who coordinated the first-ever countywide training session. “Most educators realize that if they haven’t had a crisis on their campus, they probably will have one. I don’t see how anyone living in 1996 can say, ‘It’s never going to happen.’ ”

Gerri Gordon, director of counseling for the Capistrano Unified School District, was among a group of state educators that drafted a lengthy handbook on school crisis response for California educators. Shortly after the book was written in 1994, a 16-year-old junior attempted suicide at Aliso Niguel High in Aliso Viejo.

Distraught over a breakup with his girlfriend, the boy had placed a gun under his chin and fired it in front of her and others in his fifth-period photography class on Halloween. Minutes after the shooting, Gordon rounded up the district’s counseling staff and rushed over to the school, where chaos had broken out.

“As soon as this happened, they put a plan in place and everything they implemented was extremely effective,” said Valerie Johnson, the school’s photography teacher who witnessed the shooting. “They were very sensitive to the kids, and they came out several days after the incident to work with them.”

The boy survived the incident without major injury. But on the day of the shooting, Gordon said, his classmates experienced a wide range of emotions--hysteria, panic and even anger. To calm them, a team of counselors and psychologists met with them in the school library and eventually had them revisit the site of the shooting.

“Going back to the classroom was very helpful because it helped students see that there was nothing to fear,” Gordon said. “We talked about how they felt being back there, and the kids were a lot calmer after that.”

Educators say they’ve long been prepared to cope with fires, floods and other emergencies. But because today’s problems are much more complicated and severe, they often have to create multifaceted crisis plans that involve numerous employees, police, parents and others in the community.

When the shooting occurred at El Camino Real Continuation High last week, Principal Glen Collard said he used some of the skills he’s learned from various crisis training sessions.

“It’s a lot like preparing for an earthquake. When it finally happens, you can’t do everything according to plan,” said Collard, who immediately called police and worked with his staff to bring order to the campus. “But you do have the ability to communicate with your staff effectively, and this helps you deal with something in a calm manner.”

Just as problems have grown worse on school campuses, the public also demands more openness from today’s educators, which means that school personnel can no longer sweep problems under the rug or keep critical information from the school community.

After Rossmoor Elementary day care assistant Kirk Moretti announced in 1992 that he was HIV positive and planned to talk about his health on national television, Principal Laurel Telfer knew she had a potential crisis at hand.

The “48 Hours” news program was scheduled for broadcast within a week, and parents, children, teachers and other staff members at the Los Alamitos school needed to be told that Moretti was living with the AIDS virus but had no symptoms.

“I didn’t want to hide anything,” Telfer said, adding that school employees do not have to disclose that they are HIV positive. “But the challenge was protecting his privacy and reassuring parents and the community that he posed no threat to their children.”

Following a plan she devised with district administrators, Telfer called an emergency staff meeting. At that meeting, teachers were told of Moretti’s condition and instructed to read to their students a book called “Z’s Gift,” which deals with an HIV-positive elementary school teacher.

“I also wrote a script for teachers to read to their students,” Telfer said. “It went something like this. ‘[Moretti] needs our kindness now. If people make unkind remarks, it will make him very sad.’ ”

She also sent home a letter to parents, informing them of the situation, reassuring them that Moretti posed no health risk and encouraging them to “use this opportunity to talk to [their] children about sensible health care and respect for human dignity.”

The school received one or two angry responses from parents, but many more words of praise from people impressed with Telfer’s handling of the situation.

Moretti, who now works at a different school in the district and is still without symptoms, said he was relieved that his public announcement did not cause havoc at the school and credits Telfer for her thoughtful actions.

Said Gretchen Shegina, a teacher at the school: “In the olden days, principals would not have told anyone about something like this. But now they have to be more open.”

Shegina said she believes staff training is the key for a school to effectively resolve conflicts.

“The problems we’re now seeing are much more severe, but we’ve also gotten a lot smarter,” said Shegina, who began her teaching career in 1971. “We now receive in-service training, so we can handle any situation smoothly.”

Because Orange County’s population is growing increasingly diverse, one of the main problems confronting local schools is racial intolerance.

While principal of Cypress High, Elizabeth Novack found herself in the middle of an explosive racial conflict after a group of skinheads--some of them students at the school--swung baseball bats and sicced Rottweiler dogs on a group of African American students at a local fast-food restaurant.

Although the 1994 attack occurred off campus, Novack knew that if she did not take quick action, the community would have difficulty recovering from its first major racial incident.

“My first reaction was grave despair, but I’m not the type of person who says, ‘Let’s sweep this under the rug,’ ” said Novack, now an assistant superintendent with the Cypress School District. “As an administrator, you can’t afford to get caught up in emotions. You need to stay calm and say, ‘How am I going to help these students?’ ”

The morning after the incident, Novack suspended the students responsible for the attack and assured the victims and their parents that the school would not sit idly by. Within days, Novack and other administrators visited every English class to talk to students about the attack.

Novack also contacted the Orange County Human Relations Commission and arranged for a meeting in which students, parents, police officers and other community members attended. In response to that meeting, the school later held a series of off-campus diversity retreats that allowed students to work out racial conflicts.

Novack “took the bull by its horns and basically got the situation under control,” said Norm Fried, an assistant principal at Cypress High. “Had she not done all this, I’m sure we would have had to beef up security, and tensions would probably still be high on our campus.”

Said Cypress High senior Milton Cook, one of the students victimized in the attack: “It took awhile for me to get over my anger. But once I calmed down and saw that we were having meetings at school and our parents were getting involved, I felt better.”

Cook said the diversity retreats particularly helped him because he had a chance to talk with students responsible for the attack.

“We found out that we had a lot of things in common,” he said. “Now, I have some of those kids in my classes and we get along just fine. If the school hadn’t done anything, I know I would’ve taken matters into my own hands because I was very angry.”

Along with increasing violence and racial tensions, a growing number of medically fragile students on school campuses also has required educators to be more prepared for emergencies.

On occasion, students suffer seizures. Sometimes, they last for several minutes, causing convulsions and the loss of consciousness. Sometimes, they take place in public, where bystanders gawk and panic.

But for Lucille Robustelli, helping students cope with grand mal seizures and other medical problems is a necessary part of her job as a special education teacher at Dana Hills High School.

“Because of the increased health and medical needs of students now attending school, we have to be more prepared to deal with crisis,” said Robustelli, who estimates that she’s dealt with about 40 seizures since the start of the school year. “In the past, we would never have seen these types of medically fragile students at school.”

In past years, most students with severe disabilities attended schools specifically designed for children with special needs. But now, many special education students attend neighborhood schools and often are mainstreamed into regular classes.

Because such changes have increased the risk for crisis, Robustelli said it’s important for special education teachers to be properly trained to handle medical emergencies, and more significantly, be deeply committed to students.

“You have to love doing this because there is a high stress level,” she said. “It’s always unsettling to see kids suffer, but you have to be alert and on your toes. You need to forget about your own problems and be there 100% for the kids.”