School security firm defends its cost (1 school = 32 guards)

The Times-Picayune ^ | June 25, 2007 | Darran Simon

[flutters]

The security firm had protected Olympic athletes and foiled abductions and extortions. Now its guards were merely dealing with public school students, yet they found themselves confiscating box cutters, notebooks with razor blades stashed between the pages -- even a handgun from an elementary school student.

With an enrollment tossed about the city by Hurricane Katrina, they also faced neighborhood rivalries, as students from different parts of town clashed in the hallways of neglected, rundown schools with broken fences, broken door locks and faulty fire alarms.

In the Recovery School District's difficult 2006-07 academic year, teachers weren't immune to the tumult. One student punched a teacher in the face at Sarah T. Reed High School, according to the security firm. Guards said they found a loaded gun under the seat of a sports car they stopped in front of a high school, foiling a potential drive-by shooting the day after a fight outside the school. Students at another school would sneak up behind teachers in the hall, hit them and run, the firm said.

"It was terrible. That's an understatement," said Michael Guidry, president of the Guidry Group, the Texas firm hired to provide security at Recovery District schools, a group of 22 public schools taken over by the state in 2005 for failing to meet accountability standards. "It's bad now, but it's getting better. More students want to learn. Do we still have threats? Yes. Do we still have violence? Yes. Do we still have fights, students trying to hit teachers? Yes. But . . . we don't have the violence that we had."

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

Withdrawal the guards, this is a quagmire?

[RonF]

Put a cop in every classroom.

[Dumpster Baby]

I graduated from a suburban high school in 1966, and in those days the suggesting the idea of cops and guards in schools would have caused people to stop and stare at you like you had lost your mind.