D.C. charter schools put out a call for protection

Principal Peggy Pendergrass heard it from a teacher who rushed in with the news: Three gang members were trying to force their way into Friendship Collegiate Academy, one more example of the violence that had plagued the high school in the weeks since classes started.

Her dean of security was at the door, wrestling with them as they tried to push into the building. After a struggle, the men gave up and retreated. By the time Pendergrass got to the walkway in front of the charter school in Northeast Washington, police were making arrests. But she wondered why charter schools, which enroll more than 38 percent of public school students in the city, don't get regular protection like that at traditional public schools, where about 100 officers walk the halls full time.

Charter advocates and legislators are asking themselves that question after a stretch of weeks at Friendship Collegiate in which at least eight students were assaulted or robbed after class, including one incident that sent a boy to a hospital, and several large melees broke out involving punching, kicking, and threats of gun violence. Boys and girls have gotten caught up in the problems. The same October week the school blocked the three gang members, it had to dismiss classes early one day after anonymous threats about shootings.

Violence diminished this month after police bolstered their afternoon presence in the area. But for the school -- which, at 1,232 students, is the largest charter school and the second-largest high school in the city -- that only deepens puzzlement over why police aren't routinely posted to charters in the first place.

Police officers in the schools, known as school resource officers, "know the streets and know the kids," Pendergrass said, although she acknowledged that they're not a panacea. Still, she said, the officers could do a lot to derail problems before they start.

She has a backer on the D.C. Council.

"You put the Metropolitan police officers on the street, and they're reacting to violence," said Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), who oversees the police department. "You put the school resource officers in the school, and they are reducing the likelihood of violence," although he added that the officers aren't an answer for everything, pointing to the violence that occurs at traditional public schools.

"It's clearly a serious problem. In my view, a public school is entitled to public safety protection, regardless of whether it is a DCPS public school or a public charter school," he said.

Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said in an interview that police respond to crime wherever it happens.

At least four officers now patrol the area near Friendship Collegiate by foot and bike every afternoon at dismissal time, and an officer checks in by phone daily. But there aren't enough police officers to permanently staff every school, she said.

"I think it's important for students to have positive interactions with police officers," Lanier said. But "I have to put officers where crime is occurring."

Lanier said she was not certain whether data showed that more crime was occurring in and around D.C. public schools than charter schools.

Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso said in an e-mail that his office is "currently considering this issue."

The violence has borne heavily on the minds of Friendship Collegiate's students.

"That boy got down on his two knees and begged me not to go to school here," said Linda Fisher, the mother of a freshman who was beaten by about two dozen men in September.

For a while, she juggled her shifts as a security guard so she could pick him up every day, contending with the traffic of other parents who jam the curb at dismissal time, worried about their children.

Those dismissals can be tense. The school's security guards fan out along the block, one posted about every 30 feet. They whisper to each other on earpiece walkie-talkies.

Mixed with friendly greetings to their khaki-and-polo-shirt-clad students are admonishments to keep moving. Police officers cruise back and forth on the street and the sidewalk.

Police and gang experts say problems are particularly acute near Friendship Collegiate because the school lies at the intersection of several neighborhoods.

The Minnesota Avenue transit hub across the street, with almost a dozen bus lines and an Orange Line station, makes the area even more of a mixing place, meaning that conflicts between gangs and neighborhoods that might take place on home turf at other times of day spill over there, gang experts said.

There are also conflicts between schools -- several are nearby -- and within school populations, although parents and teachers at Friendship Collegiate said their hallways are quiet. Some of the young people who loiter at the transit hub are former Friendship Collegiate students who were expelled.

The gangs will "watch these kids, see who's hanging out with who. They'll ask what neighborhood they're from. Then they'll come the next morning and jump them," said Bridget Miller, who consults with D.C. schools as part of the Youth Gang Task Force.

But she wasn't sure that adding police would solve the problem, calling school resource officers a deterrent, not a solution. School leaders would do better to reach out more aggressively to the gang members, she said, adding that some Friendship Collegiate students were involved in gangs.

"Instead of getting them together to find out what's going on, to squash it, they're not doing anything," she said. "Unless you meet the problem head on, it's still going to be there."

Students said that even if the hallways of their school are safe, worries about out-of-school troubles sometimes cross into class time.

"I love this school. I shouldn't have to go anywhere else," said Mychal Sheow, a freshman who was assaulted a block from the school in mid-September. The possibility of getting assaulted is on his mind "all the time," he said.

Other students see violence as inevitable.

"I haven't been jumped here -- yet," said Juwan Savoy, the freshman class president, who has stopped taking the train and doesn't travel alone. "I say yet because I don't know what's going to happen."