E.C. Huey has analysis of Friday’s brawl at Grimsley High School, while the N&R follows up and editorializes:
Critics rightly cite racially disparate suspension statistics as a cause for concern. For instance, Guilford Schools Superintendent Terry Grier said Monday that “a black male student is 44 times more likely to be suspended at Grimsley.”
……The ugliness that occurred Friday called for a tough response, regardless of race, and got it. That said, school officials shouldn’t be willing to throw away the key, either. Punishment alone isn’t the answer. The whole community needs to attack the root issues underlying these conflicts. “If you don’t deal with it, it will not go away,” Grier said.
There is a natural impulse to label such incidents as school problems. But they are clearly community problems that will require community solutions.
Board member Kris Cooke “cited a need for more programs that give children alternatives to getting into trouble. ‘You’ve just got to be innovative,'” she said….
….while fellow board member Walter Childs said “a number of things need to happen: Better jobs are needed to fight poverty; More role models are needed; More recreation facilities and programs are needed.”
