No tolerance policy

Larry Di Giovanni

CHINLE — Harrison Yazzie went to the meeting of the Chinle Unified School Board Wednesday expecting board members to vote on his anti-violence, anti-gangs initiative.

Instead Yazzie said that Rose Martinez, president of the five-member board, did not have him on the agenda under an "instructional item" as the board had voted to do at its March meeting. Instead she limited him to two minutes under "community response."

Yazzie, who is president of the Chinle High School's parent-teacher-student organization (PTSO) as well as a pastor of a local church, now accuses the school district of trying to delay his initiative.

Yazzie said that he and fellow parents were denied the opportunity to present a "zero-tolerance" resolution and accompanying Powerpoint presentation to the board and audience members.

They wanted the school board to adopt new rules of student conduct that will increase the penalties and better hold accountable students who inflict violence and an unsafe school environment on other students.

"I stood up and told the board that these things need to change," Yazzie said, referring to fights, weapons, absenteeism, drugs, alcohol and gang activity that he contends are plaguing the school's 1,200 students.

Martinez' husband, Stan, contacted at his and his wife's Chinle business, Big O Tires, said she was on travel Friday in San Francisco and provided her number at the Hyatt Regency. She did not return two messages left for her.

The PTSO's initiative against school violence, drugs and alcohol comes just as Chinle Unified is preparing for a School Safety Seminar to be presented by an organization called Know Gangs.

The seminar will be held Monday through Wednesday and will include school assemblies on gang awareness, school violence and a Wednesday night community assembly in the high school gymnasium.

Parents who want an idea of just how bad the situation is within the Chinle school district can get an idea by looking at items that the school security personnel have confiscated from students.

Inside the security office are two boxes full of weapons some hand made that have been confiscated before, during or after fights at the high school. They include numb chucks, chains, a variety of knives including switchblades and fold-out pocket knives, bats and clubs, and some pellet-type guns.

Some weapons are on the creative side in an attempt to avoid detection: one was a Christian cross, of the necklace type, with a small fold-out blade within.

The school's security department, which has four officers on duty at the high school at any one time, uses wand-type metal detectors to search students if needed. They have also confiscated since last summer boxes full of cigarettes, lighters and small metal pipes intended for illegal drug use.

Yazzie has befriended the security officers and said they do an admirable job to protect most students at the school who do want to learn and graduate from their more violent peers.

But the officers are few and can't be everywhere at once, he said.

Students detained after a fight, and who have weapons confiscated, are either turned over to tribal police, or sent home in the custody of their parents upon the signing of a waiver. Too often, they end up back in school within a short amount of time, Yazzie said.

Two board members who attended the March 5 meeting in Tsaile, Marla Stewart and Virgil Brown Jr., said they made the move approved by the board to place Yazzie's anti-violence initiative on the April 2 agenda. Their motion passed after Martinez handed them out a copy of the PTSO's proposed resolution in letter form.

However, it is the board president, Martinez, and school administrators who have the final say as to what items are placed on any agenda for board approval. Martinez wasn't at March's meeting and Martinez said that she used her own absenteeism as the reason to hold off the parents' concerns on school violence.

Yazzie was also upset that instead of placing him under "instructional items,"as the board had agreed in March, Martinez limited him to two minutes under community response. He said speakers normally get three minutes.

"I think she (Martinez) is making up the rules as she goes," he said.

Stewart said Thursday that she also believed before the meeting that Yazzie was going to give a presentation.

Chinle High School does have problems with gangs and violence, but has taken two proactive steps to deal with these problems, Stewart said.

One step is the School Safety Seminar next week. Another is that the school board has hired a new superintendent Leon Ben, Ph.D., originally of Lukachukai and who has worked the past several years for the San Carlos Apache Tribe of Sacaton, Ariz. Ben will replace Phillip Bluehouse, who resigned last year.

The new superintendent has experience with anti-violence, anti-gang initiatives, Stewart said. Ben will join the district in the summer. Chee Benally, an assistant superintendent, has been serving the district in an acting capacity.

Brown, like Stewart, said that he is concerned about violent activity at the school and that's why he and Stewart supported one another in requesting that the PTSO be added onto the April 2 agenda.

Both Brown and Stewart, however, were absent from Wednesday's meeting, which may have prevented Yazzie from being added onto the agenda. It is much harder to add on an agenda item than to delete one.

"As a board member, and most importantly, as parents, we want all of our children to be in a safe environment," Brown said, noting that students have had no reported disruptions brought to his attention this week.

"School is their second home,"he added."We want our students to be able to concentrate on academics."

For many students in the high school served by the reservation's largest completely on-reservation district of about 4,500 students, learning has often been difficult, Yazzie said.

He said Chinle and its surrounding communities such as Many Farms are home to 14 active gangs. The district's alternative high school, located on the old high school grounds, has students ranging in age up to 23, and some of them are gang leaders, Yazzie charged.

Lucinda Campbell, a member of the Parent Teacher Organization at Tsaile Public School, a K-8 school, said that parents, in many cases, are not offered enough involvement on important issues by the school board. Campbell cited as one example a federally funded Safe Schools for the 21st Century grant that the district has received. Parents were not involved in how the money was to be spent, she said, and have not been updated on the grant expenditures.

"Yet they tell us it's the parents that won't get involved," Campbell said of the board.

Yazzie said the PTSO's anti-violence, zero-tolerance resolution was sparked in part by a February article in the Independent, which detailed an alleged incident of severe animal cruelty inflicted by two Chinle High students a boy and a girl.

Yazzie said the incident reportedly involving two students kicking a cat to death inside a school hallway was true and has greatly upset many parents. The students then allegedly waited until a janitor cleaned up the mess and disposed of the remains outside before going into the dumpster, retrieving the carcass throwing it back down the hallway.

Community members and animal advocates including Glenda Davis, director of the Navajo Nation Veterinary Program, said such violent incidents of animal cruelty are indicative of severe psychological problems that may lead to much worse behavior later inflicted on humans.

Foster would not confirm that the incident involved a cat, but did offer that two students had been suspended.

A school official involved in the issue, who requested confidentiality for job protection, said that an attempt to suspend the two students for a 10-day maximum allowed by law was lifted because the penalty was complained as being too severe by the parents.

There was no psychological evaluation of the students required upon their return, the official said. Foster, however, said the 10-day suspension was enforced while declining to say what the suspension was about in specific terms.

Stewart said she was "appalled" to learn about the cat killing incident. "We don't want anything like animal abuse happening in our schools,"she said.

The Know Gangs web site can be viewed at www.knowgangs.com, according to the seminar poster.