THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 7, 1995 TAG: 9504070511
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
Police chief Melvin High has a prescription for what ails today's children that he says would put him out of business if the community took it to heart.
Speaking Thursday about juvenile violence and crime to parents at Bowling Park Elementary School, High said prevention is the key. He outlined six ways parents and the community can help kids stay out of trouble and succeed in life:
Provide them with positive activities after school.
Give them adequate knowledge.
Help them develop faith and courage.
Help them develop self-discipline.
Provide them with good role models.
Give them a good family structure and support.
``If we do those things, I guarantee you that I will be out of business,'' said High, who sat on a panel with parents, teachers and professionals who deal with youth issues. ``People have become over-reliant on the police, but we don't have the solution; we are only part of the solution.''
About 100 parents attended the annual ``Black Plight Conference'' sponsored by Bowling Park, one of the city's 10 majority-black community schools.
A national panel of education experts convened by Redbook magazine recognized Bowling Park earlier this year as one of the best elementary schools in the nation. The school serves a large percentage of poor kids - a group most at risk of failure - but the school's emphasis on parental involvement is a primary reason for its success, Principal Herman D. Clark Jr. said.
``We don't wait for the parents to come to us, we go to them,'' Clark said.
At least twice a year, he said, teachers scatter into the community to meet with parents, while volunteers from two nearby churches that have formed partnerships with the school oversee the classrooms.
``If the parents are hanging clothes out, we hang clothes out,'' Clark said. ``We do whatever is necessary.''
Teachers and parents converted a cluttered storage closet into a parents' resource room. The school set up a class for parents to earn a high-school equivalency diploma. It applied for a grant to hire a ``parent educator,'' who visits parents and discusses their children's progress in school.
``Our children need love and they need to know how to be committed to something,'' John Rainey, a physical education teacher at the school, said. But, schools ``cannot be everything to everybody. We can't raise the children. We need a community approach,'' he said.
State schools Superintendent William C. Bosher Jr., who attended the conference, said many children go astray because schools and parents don't create high enough expectations. Bosher, father of three, said the main thing parents can do for their children is to put ``loving performance pressure'' on them.
Patricia Holloman, a teacher at Carver Intermediate School in Chesapeake, said her principal sent her to the conference to find ideas to increase parental involvement.
``The violence that is in the schools is frightening to teachers,'' Holloman said. ``We have some children who do not know how to express the anger inside them, and they need alternatives to striking out.''
Leo V. Williams Jr., senior director of pupil personnel services, said parents sometimes are too quick to side with an unruly child against school officials, even though the child in many cases is wrong.
``The child gets the wrong message,'' Williams said. ``There is a way to tell that child he is wrong without calling names, pointing fingers or placing blame.''
Williams said an effort to create safer schools in Norfolk is showing results: The number of guns confiscated from students dropped to 5 last year from a high of 25 guns five years ago. This year, authorities have found two guns on school grounds in Norfolk.
Bowling Park students are taught to recite a pledge that includes these lines: ``I am somebody. The me I see is the me I'll be.'' ILLUSTRATION: Melvin High
by CNB