[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 35 (Thursday, March 24, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                            SAFE SCHOOLS ACT

 Mr. WOFFORD. Mr. President, by the time the final school bell 
rings each day, about 100,000 American children have brought guns to 
school. And those guns will have killed or injured 40 children. Fear 
and intimidation are robbing our children of their education, their 
hopes for the future, and, in some cases, their lives.
  The Safe Schools Act, which the Senate is now considering as part of 
the Goals 2000 legislation, would help schools across the country to 
craft their own solutions to the spreading epidemic of youth violence. 
This legislation is a good first step--but we need to do more. When 
Congress reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we 
must build on the Safe Schools Act--to provide parents, teachers and 
students with resources to support their own approaches to violence in 
and around our schools.
  Mr. President, Steve Bumbaugh recently wrote about his experiences in 
a Washington, DC school, and I ask that it be included in the Record 
immediately following my remarks.
  The article follows:

                       [From the Washington Post]

                    The Year of Learning Dangerously

                          (By Steve Bumbaugh)

       One of my kids was comparing the Articles of Confederation 
     to the Constitution. Another was unlocking the mysteries of 
     pi. Another was visiting a book report with my co-worker, 
     Phyllis. It was shaping up to be one of those days you look 
     forward as teacher. And when you're teaching in D.C. public 
     schools, these good moments can't be taken for granted. For 
     the good can turn bad at any moment.
       Just after 11 a.m. we heard ``pop-pop-pop-pop'' coming from 
     outside of our basement classroom at Eastern High School 
     followed by screams and the sound of frantic running. I 
     looked at my kids. They looked at me. Firecrackers, I was 
     hoping. Maybe a gun fired into the air. I had the sick 
     feeling, though, that this was not the case.
       A few minutes later, we learned the worst: Yards away from 
     my classroom, a 17-year-old had just been shot four times by 
     another 17-year-old student.
       It's strange to think now that we had chosen to bring our 
     program to Eastern because of its safety. Safety, of course, 
     is a relative term. My 67 students were adopted by the ``I 
     Have a Dream'' Foundation six years ago when they were 
     seventh-graders at Kramer Junior High School in Anacostia--an 
     even more dangerous place. Today, as seniors, they're spread 
     out in schools throughout the area; most attend Eastern. But 
     I guess violence is no longer something we can skirt 
     geographically or strategize against. Just a week ago one of 
     my students suffered a broken jaw when he was attacked by a 
     group of boys in the same stairwell where this shooting 
     occurred. Two weeks before that one of my students at another 
     school was stabbed in a hallway. Today, as I write this, an 
     Eastern assistant principal has just been punched by 
     teenagers trespassing in the school. In four of the five 
     D.C. high schools where I regularly work with students, 
     there has been gunfire in the school or on campus during 
     school hours this year.
       It is difficult for me to explain to outsiders how, and how 
     much, this perpetual stream of violence matters. How, to 
     teachers like me, the constant stress is an assault on our 
     ability to educate. Who can teach algebra when constantly 
     mistaking the playful screams of teenagers frolicking for 
     screams of serious trouble? Yet we grownups bear the least of 
     violence's burden. It's the kids who must cope with the 
     intrinsic provocations and temptations of adolescence and at 
     the same time attempt to survive in a teenage world too rough 
     for most adults to comprehend.
       When I look at my kids I wonder: Who among them will know 
     to type their research papers and turn them in on time, when 
     many in their class will do neither? Which of them will 
     understand how essential it is to be at school early, when so 
     many of their classmates arrive late or don't come at all? 
     And, more fundamental, who can worry about such trivialities 
     when a handful of teenagers are shooting in the hallways and 
     frightening numbers of their peers are being killed and 
     maimed out on the street?
       To me these are not abstract questions. I was born to a 
     single mother on the Southside of Chicago. I was afforded a 
     few miracles as a child, and I ended up graduating from Yale. 
     Who is providing miracles to teenagers these days? In the 
     brutal teenage world of 1994, how many of my kids will be 
     able to realize their potential?
       Sometimes it's easier to shut out the violence. Three years 
     ago, when our program was housed at Kramer, we all became 
     numb to what we saw. There was the boy stabbed in the back, 
     crawling towards an assistant principal and collapsing in a 
     puddle of his own blood. There was the night I came out of 
     Kramer after a tutoring session and had to duck for cover as 
     bullets hit the door above my head. Afterward, I watched 
     incredulously as a group of boys scooped up their victim's 
     body, threw it into the back seat of their car and sped off. 
     Later that year I watched a female P.E. teacher hold the hand 
     of a boy who'd been shot on the school's playground. She 
     smiled at the boy and reassured him: Everything would be all 
     right.
       Yet even Kramer seemed a safe haven compared to what I've 
     seen in the neighborhoods where my students live. One evening 
     I was driving a boy home and we saw the body of a man 
     lying across the sidewalk. He had been shot in the head 
     while he was getting a haircut and managed to stumble 
     outside before he died. One summer afternoon when I was in 
     a barber shop, I convinced the friend of one of my 
     students to walk away from an argument he was having with 
     another boy. When I returned to the shop a half an hour 
     later, the boy I had counseled was in the alley behind the 
     shop. He was dead. The boy with whom he had argued had 
     apparently shot him in the head. One Saturday morning when 
     I was leaving the Anacostia library after tutoring some 
     students, a young man pulled a gun on me and threatened to 
     kill me if I didn't stop ``grittin'' on him. His friends 
     laughed at his bravado.
       The day of the Eastern High School shooting, it was clear 
     that the accumulation of such experiences takes its toll on 
     even the strongest of us. Even on Ralph Neal, the imposing 
     principal of Eastern. That Eastern is generally regarded as 
     the best high school in the eastern half of the city is in 
     part a tribute to his swift discipline and stern demeanor. 
     When Neal walks through the corridors, the toughest students 
     straighten their backs and fidget nervously.
       An hour after the shooting, Neal called an assembly in the 
     auditorium. Students filled most of the seats, and the walls 
     were lined with teachers, staff people, police officers and 
     parents who had rushed to the school when they heard that 
     there had been a shooting. Only a fraction of the parents 
     gathered this day attend the PTA meetings in which report 
     cards are distributed. It took fear and desperation to bring 
     so many of us to the same place.
       Despite the crowd, silence fell when Neal stepped up to the 
     podium to speak.
       After explaining that a boy had been shot outside the 
     cafeteria, he implored the students not to take matters into 
     their own hands. He asked students to tell an adult if they 
     knew their peers were bringing weapons into the school. Then 
     Neal, a rugged veteran of the city's toughest schools, began 
     to cry.
       A gasp swept through the auditorium. Soon some of the 
     teachers, students and parents were also crying. Usually, we 
     cope with the mayhem around us by wearing a mask of 
     indifference, by pretending not to be bothered. But when your 
     last line of defense between what should be and what is 
     starts to cry, who can keep the mask up?
       Still, as a teacher, you learn that progress is measured in 
     small steps. Those tears were steps. They were hope.
       In the four years I've been with my students I've grown to 
     love them as if they were my own little sisters and brothers. 
     I am indescribably moved when our program can help improve a 
     student's life. Three years ago when our foundation sent four 
     students to a strict, predominantly white boarding school in 
     rural Ohio, I was nervous about how my kids would cope with 
     so many adjustments. Now we have seven students at Mt. Vernon 
     Academy, all of whom will graduate in May, and most of whom 
     will go on to college. Last year, when one of my shy students 
     from Ballou High School worked up the nerve to sing a solo in 
     front of 300 people, she wowed the crowd. As they gave her a 
     standing ovation, I bragged like a proud father. These are 
     the things I live for.
       But after four years of passing from one crisis to another, 
     never knowing what lunacy lurks beneath the veneer of a calm 
     day, I've grown tired. I overestimated my ability to affect 
     the lives of my students, and I feel handcuffed by an 
     overburdened system that is not equipped to educate some of 
     the brightest minds in our city. I'm tired of going to the 
     funerals of teenage boys with whom I've joked around and 
     played ball. I'm tired of my heart breaking when I find out 
     that another one of my girls is pregnant. I'm tired of 
     pleading with kids to return to school, and knowing that they 
     probably won't. I'm tired of watching energetic kids grow 
     into perpetually tired, depressed young adults. I'm tired of 
     having nightmares after I've seen someone who was shot or 
     stabbed. I'm tired of coming to school on Mondays and having 
     to hear my students discuss their neighborhood's weekend body 
     count. I'm tired.
       I can console myself that my journey into Washington's 
     inner city ends in June, when most of my students will 
     graduate from high school. I will leave this town and go to 
     the safe environments of graduate school. If I choose, I'll 
     never have to return to another rough neighborhood in my 
     life. Many of my students, of course, don't have these 
     options. On a day when a classmate gets shot in school, most 
     return home to neighborhoods where they may hear gunfire at 
     night. Most will pass drug dealers and drunks on the walk 
     from the bus stop to their homes. Some will go to homes where 
     siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles crowd into too small a 
     space. Some will go home to take care of nieces and nephews, 
     younger siblings or their own children, and never get around 
     to the homework that's due tomorrow. Some will return to 
     homes where parents expend so much energy just trying to 
     make it to the next day that they don't take the time to 
     read the newspaper or pick up a book. For too many of my 
     students, there is simply no respite from the perpetual 
     crisis that strangles their community.
       After Wednesday's shooting, I left school at 3 and walked 
     up the street to get a slice of pizza. On the way there I ran 
     into a group of 3- and 4-year-olds walking down the sidewalk 
     with daycare workers. One little boy ran from the group and 
     grabbed my leg. He looked up at me through huge black eyes. A 
     mischievous grin brightened his dark brown face. Only three 
     years old, he already knew that he was so cute he could get 
     away with wrapping himself around the legs of perfect 
     strangers. One of the daycare workers extricated him from my 
     thigh as I laughed.
       I paused on the sidewalk and watched the children disappear 
     around the corner. I wondered what kind of life awaited that 
     beautiful little boy. Is his mother a teenager? Does he know 
     his father? Will his brother be shot dead one day or will his 
     sister have a baby when she is 15? Does his mother read 
     stories to him and tuck him into bed, or does she struggle 
     with a drug problem and slap him when he asks her questions? 
     Who will teach this little boy to read? Who will make him go 
     to school on time and do his homework? Who will reward him 
     for being gentle?
       We should be ashamed that such questions have to be asked, 
     and more ashamed that the answer is often no one. We should 
     hang our heads in disgrace when beautiful brown children grow 
     up to be hard-hearted adults who ravage their own communities 
     because of the crimes committed against them.

                          ____________________