Crime is up this year at Edison High Posted on May 15th
Assaults and weapons possession are up this school year at Philadelphia’s Edison High School, district statistics show, confirming statements by teachers that safety at the district’s second-largest school has deteriorated.
In a Monday letter to the district’s safe-schools advocate, Jack Stollsteimer, seven teachers and an aide who are Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union representatives at Edison said recent cases of gun and other weapons possession, assaults on students, and vandalism at the 2,350-student school were cause for “deep concerns for the safety of our student population.”
A violent-incident report provided by the district says that through April, there were 64 assaults this school year at Edison, on Luzerne Street in North Philadelphia, compared with 48 during the same time period the year before. And there were 13 weapons offenses, compared with 6 in the previous year.
Through April, 214 incidents of all sorts were reported, compared with 222 for all of the 2006-07 school year.
While acknowledging that “our data clearly show an increase in incidents this year,” district spokesman Fernando Gallard said, “that is not a particularly high number of incidents for a school that size. We do not consider this to be a particularly unsafe school.”
He added that the district had beefed up security at Edison in response, adding new cameras and increasing the security force by 30 percent.
Students, parents and teachers at Edison had mixed views of the situation there.
Sharon Newman Ehrlich, who has taught science there for 15 years, said: “I see more incidents this year. Things are not going smoothly.”
Ehrlich said some consistently disruptive students had not been removed from the school quickly enough.
“I’ve seen some instances where there are chronically troubled kids and it takes a while to get them transferred out. They stay here longer than they really should,” she said.
“The majority of the students here are wonderful, and the teachers are very good,” Ehrlich said. “It pains me that Edison once again has gotten the negative attention of the media. There are a lot of wonderful things going on here.”
Students were critical of the atmosphere and offerings at the school, but said they were not particularly upset by a recent spate of incidents that included the arrest of a student who smuggled a gun into the school and the beating of a student in a classroom by four classmates.
One 10th grader, Nicole Green, 18, lamented the school’s lack of regular teachers, extracurricular programs and educational materials.
“We don’t have enough books. And if you do have a book, it’s written in or has pages missing,” she said.
And 10th grader Jordan Gonzalez, leaning on the iron gate outside the school a little before the 3 p.m. dismissal, said: “I hate this school. The teachers don’t really . . . care if you pass or not. They’re just here to get paid.”
As proof, Gonzalez offered that he skipped his afternoon classes about twice a week without his teachers saying a word.
The lack of attention and “a lot of fights” in and outside the school, he said, are Edison’s main problems in providing a decent education.
A parent, Madeline Camacho, 38, defended Edison. “I think school is what you make it,” she said while waiting for her son, Michael, the last of her three children to attend Edison. “If you make it a good school, it’s a good school.”
Contact staff writer Dan Hardy
at 610-701-7638 or dhardy@phillynews.com.
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