School Safety

On a daily basis, schools and school districts face a multitude of challenges in keeping weapons, drugs and any other harmful individuals or items out of their buildings.

Most school buildings have a small handful of individuals that deal with safety and preventing items from coming in. It is visually obvious very few schools have enough resources and staff to handle the high need of safety in a school.

I often ask myself, why are school districts so reactive when it comes to safety? Why don't they provide schools with the resources to scan every student, provide doors with alarms on them, airport style bag scanners, or with enough video cameras to monitor school activity?

The fact is without a safe environment no learning can occur. Staff and students will be to concerned with their safety then with teaching and learning.

I challenge all school districts to make sure they provide enough resources to make sure that incidents of violence that involve weapons, do not occur. I challenge school districts to become "Proactive" rather then waiting for an incident to occur.

Another critical element involved in creating a safe school environment is having enough counseling and wellness resources available to students. Counselors need to have manageable size case loads so that they can know students more intimately and hopefully prevent incidents from occurring since they are better informed.

The last and most vital element is parent/guardian-student relationships. We need our parents of our students to talk, listen and respond to their children. We all remember as a child we needed someone we could talk to if we had an issue, or even if we didn't. We all need someone to vent or celebrate with, but we often get caught up in our own lives to take time to listen to our children who need us the most. We also have to encourage our students the importance of telling an adult when another child may be upset, and may cause harm to him or herself or another individual.

I know you have heard it before but I cannot emphasize it enough!
"It takes a village to raise a child!"


Living the Dream!
Mr. Anibal Soler, Jr.
www.anibalsoler.com

A Letter to the Mayor, City Councilman and School Board Officials of Rochester

Dear Mr. Duffy, Mr. McFadden and Mr. White,

As a citizen of this community I want to applaud you on your efforts to
increase the awareness of this ongoing issue of violence and poverty within
our Rochester community. I view this problem as not just belonging to the
City of Rochester, but belonging to the entire community including the
suburbs of Greece, Gates, Brighton and so on. As you know the demographics
of the suburbs are changing as more of us minorities are moving out into
those areas.

I work in the City School District, as a High School Vice Principal and I
love my job and the students I serve. I have spent my entire professional
career in the Rochester City School District as a teacher and now as a
school administrator. I attended elementary, middle and high school in the
city and I would have graduated from them if it wasn’t for my family moving
down lake avenue one street over into a town called Greece, where I completed
high school.

This problem of violence I see as a huge breakdown of the educational system
and what it offers Latino and African American students. Being Latino the
issue of relevance was something that I struggled with while attending city
and suburban schools, relevance was something that was not in place in
curriculum nor in practice.

Today as a school administrator I encourage my staff that they build,
relationship with the students they serve and that they model what is it to
be a positive and productive citizen. That they incorporate strategies
which help show relevance to why it is important to succeed at school,
especially to a student who comes from an environment where school is low on
the list of priorities.

As you gentleman continue to push forward with your various projects that
will affect the students and the community of Rochester please remember to
encourage that the RCSD place a Superintendent that is vested in this
community and wants to remain here to see things through. One who knows
that the true litmus test for any project in the educational system, is
whether the project is truly beneficial to students. A Superintendent who
understands the various influential variables of urban education, a
Superintendent who is truly focused on raising the level of success for our
students.

I also want to remind you that most of the individuals regardless of
nationality in our city school system want to see the students succeed, and
work very hard to make sure that this occurs. All the students I serve do
not care what the color of the teacher is but rather that the teacher CARE
and is there because they want to make a difference, although ethnicity
helps build a connection it is not the ultimate factor in determining
student success.

I often go home from work frustrated and discouraged that more cannot be
done in terms of providing resources and support for the students that I
serve. I do not sleep well at night knowing that statistically half of the
students that enter my school building will not finish high school. This is
a crisis!

As you are all aware it takes a community to raise a child, and education
equals opportunity. I hope the Children’s Zone does come to fruition for
the sake of our students and community.

Once again keep up the great work as we are in a state of emergency to save
thousands of youth! Don’t hesitate to lean on others like myself for
support or help as the success of our city depends on it.

Thank you for your time and have a blessed day!


--
¡Viviendo el Sueño! (Living the Dream!)
Mr. Anibal Soler, Jr.
http://www.anibalsoler.com
http://anibalsoler.blogspot.com