By Lyn Walden

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandated that schools that are “persistently dangerous” be identified by the states. Student victim of crimes in those schools have the option of transferring to another school. However, under NCLB each state may define the criteria for persistently dangerous. As a result, by the end of the school year 2006- 2007, only 46 schools out of 94.000 schools were identified as persistently dangerous; two of those 46 were in Georgia, one of the two in Atlanta--Long Island Middle School. No school in Georgia has been so named since.

In August 2007, The Inspector General Perspective on the Unsafe School Choice Option published findings of questionable practices by a few states, including Georgia. Among those findings, Georgia school administrators did not report all qualifying disciplinary incidents, nor did they offer transfers to victims of school crimes.

Principals are reporting some crimes: The Condition of Education for 2010 stated that in 2007-2008, 75 percent of public schools reported one or more violent crime incidents, and 60 percent of schools with an enrollment of more than 1000 students reported 20 or more violent incidents. Are principals only reporting problems when they need outside help?

In 2009, concerned with the problem of the states establishing their own criteria for persistently dangerous, Trump writing in the National School Safety and Security Services theorized that principals are pressured to underreport and/or non-report school crime and violence.

Could it be that from the date the NCLB mandate began until the end of the 2009-2010 school year, only two schools in Georgia were persistently dangerous as stipulated under federal guidelines?

The Georgia definition states that a school is considered persistently dangerous if for three consecutive years at least one student is found to have committed a violent crime at school, or if 2 percent or 10 students are found guilty of committing a drug offense, a felony weapons violation or terroristic threats.

The Georgia Department of Education’s website has a dropdown menu with every school district and every school broken down by the incidents per year that count for persistently dangerous, I encourage every parent to look at your child ’s school.

Because of the rights of children, statistics are hard to find on crimes committed by minors. However, in a paper written by advocate Rawling, he states that between 1994 and 2005, approximately 4,500 children were charged as adults for the very crimes that are on that dropdown menu. I wonder how many more more children and teens were arrested and not charged as adults?

The Georgia Department of Education website lists a hotline to report bullying: 1-877-SAY-STOP. I encourage every parent to use this number to report any incident that your child reports, which makes you believe that school is unsafe for your child .

As I read that only two schools in Georgia were ever considered persistently dangerous, my years breaking up fights and watching kids walk down the halls in handcuffs are at odds. We cannot start to fix a problem in our schools if we do not first acknowledge we have a problem, Yes, we have a problem.