Increasing School Safety Legislation in WA

Five days a week in Washington, the law says that kids need to get up and go to school. Many of them have a safe trip, many of them don’t. In some areas, kids walk past gang members who are actively recruiting, selling drugs, and/or soliciting. During tough economic times, gang activity increases.

Well, we’re in tough economic times, and some of the state’s hardest hit areas are suffering from economic trouble and epidemic gang problems. For example: in Mattewa, the Wahluke School District, which has approximately 2,000 students, spends $40,000 a year to bus every single child to and from school, because it has been determined that it is too dangerous for the children to walk.

Two Bills have been introduced to provide local schools and school districts with the tools they need to effectively protect students from gang activity at the community level. Time is running out, however, and if these do not pass, another year will go by with some policies being applied inappropriately, and many children not receiving much-needed protection from predatory gang violence.

Until Olympia can figure out how to help these communities end the gang epidemics that many are facing, Olympia needs to make sure that these communities have the tools they need to keep themselves, and their students, safe. Period.

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Gang Policies in Schools, Senate Bill 6511, and Increasing School Safety Senate Bill 6512

were passed out of the Senate K-12 and Early Learning Committee, and have passed to the Senate Rules Committee for second reading.

1. Gang Policies in Schools seeks to standardize definitions and policies so that youth across Washington State receive equal and appropriate experiences in school. It can be extremely challenging for many to determine what is gang culture and bad, and what is youth culture, and is simply self-expression. Further, there is currently some inconsistency between actual gang policy definitions in schools and state law. SB 6511 would correct these issues.
   
2. Increasing School Safety is an effort to provide local communities with an effective tool to keep gang members and other predatory criminals away from the area around schools, where these criminals often gather. According to the

Crimes against Children Research Center, more than half of all assaults and other non-family-related crimes occur as the child is walking to and from school. This Bill would allow trained school administrators to respond to threatening situations by issuing an exclusion order, prohibiting the threatening individual from returning to the area around the school for a specific amount of time.

We have been told that this Bill does not have support because these issues are largely taking place in Eastern Washington. We find this very confusing, and want to be sure that the folks in Eastern Washington are aware of this Bills existence, and invite them to speak up.

As a member of the Gangs In Schools Task Force representing the PTA, and as a person who has heard time and again from parents how worried they are for their children and communities, and who has heard from teachers and school staff that they’re sometimes afraid coming and going from school… I have to say that this Bill would serve a valuable purpose.

State-level laws are incredibly difficult to draft, because they need to work for every person in the state. SB 6512 offers a tool to schools across the state, with standards in place, that can be used at the community level. With oversight, to protect freedom of expression and to protect the rights of WA children to receive an education.