LANSING - Lansing-area high school students voiced concerns about school safety to a panel of state House Democrats on Tuesday at Everett High School, the site of a 1978 school shooting.
Vince Villegas, an Eastern High School senior, 220 Pennsylvania Ave., in Lansing, said the first step to preventing school violence is making counselors available.
“The average student would have to put in a request to see their counselors and wait about a week,” Villegas said. “I’ll go down there and wait for two hours.”
Villegas told lawmakers that counselors are bogged down with paperwork and scheduling, and they don’t have time attend to the students’ personal problems before they lead to violence. He thinks the Legislature could help.
Democrats have set the goal for lowering the student-to-counselor ratio from 700 to one to 300 to one.
“I want to see them assign funding to hire more counselors,” he said. “That way we will have counselors that truly counsel.”
Everett, 3900 Stabler St., recently invested $140,000 to set up an anti-bullying hotline, to which students can anonymously report instances of harassment. The program complements the Michigan State Police’s hotline, which allows the public to report the possibility of school violence.
State Rep. Virg Bernero, D-Lansing, attended the meeting and announced a Democratic initiative to prevent school violence after listening to the students concerns in light of the shooting at Santana High School in Santee, Calif., eight days before, when two students died and 13 were wounded.
“We rush in grievance counselors after the fact, but where is the prevention?” Bernero asked the more than 20 in attendance. “We need to learn from these tragedies that happened and decided what we can do to ensure we don’t have a tragedy in Michigan.”
The Democrats announced four proposals intended to increase the number of school counselors, encourage intervention programs and establish an office of school-based health.
Republicans say they have begun to deal with the school violence issue by committing $10 million to hire and train more counselors across the state.
“We have already put our money where our mouth is,” said Kendall Wingrove, spokesman for the House Republicans. “House Republicans enacted similar proposals last session with strong bipartisan support.”
Dale Glynn, principal of Everett, thinks it’s time lawmakers address school violence.
“It makes me feel good because our kids voices are getting heard,” he said. “They are the ones affected by the education, they are the victims and they receive the rewards.”
Glynn was praised by lawmakers for his efforts to keep his school safe. Everett has former police officers on staff and a close relationship with teachers that focuses on prevention.
“No one wants to deal with the small stuff, they want to handle the weapons and the drugs, they don’t understand the lesser problems lead to that,” Glynn said.
Ben Hobbs, a senior at Everett, was encouraged to see lawmakers adapting their plans to the students’ needs.
“There was a lot of good conversations here about safety in schools and I did enjoy that they actually listen to what we had to say,” he said.
Hobbs said more improvements can be made at Everett.
“The students need to be more involved in the programs that are already established like peer mediation,” Hobbs said. “There needs to be a better connection, people shouldn’t be isolated.”
