Massive brawl at Vallejo (CA) high school raises additional safety concerns for the district.

[RandySF]

VALLEJO (KRON) — A big fight at Vallejo High School last Friday has is raising new concerns about safety.

Cell phone video from a student caught the massive brawl on video. The person who took the video tells KRON 4 that upwards of 50 students were involved in the fight.

Monday, school site safety officials made their presence known, some standing on campus, others driving around in golf carts.

KRON 4 tried to talk to the person identified as the school principal, but she refused to answer any questions.

DR. Alana Shackelford, the Director of Community Engagement for the school district, refused an on-camera interview, but said that the fight involved about 20-25 students. She said that some students were bit, but was not sure of the extent of contact. Shackelford said that no ambulances were called as a result of the fight.

Police were called, but no arrests were made.

Shackelford said that the students involved were disciplined, but would not elaborate.

Also on Friday, the school was placed on lock-down twice. Once, after an employee thought he saw a weapon flashed in a car driving by the school and then again after gunshots were heard. Shackelford said that she doesn’t think these incidents were related to the fight.




http://kron4.com/2015/06/01/brawl-at-vallejo-high-school-renews-safety-concerns/

[cwydro]

1. Lovely.

This is our future. Kids acting like this now does not bode well.

And what did she mean "some students were bit"? Is her grammar that poor?

Or was it supposed to be hit?

Gah.

[daredtowork]

2. There have been several mysterious incidents in Berkeley

The news only says that large groups of students gathered to fight, but that the fight was broken up. There is never any explanation over what the fight was over.

I just read that there are new measures to reduce the numbers of illegally enrolled students. I'm not sure whether that will reduce a problem that's being imported from Oakland or increase a problem that's being caused by underlying class tensions in Berkeley. (There have been rapid racial demographic shifts here and huge income inequality in concentrated bands within a fairly small space. While you can argue this is a function of the "market", it often feels like a deliberate onslaught.)

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2015/01/22/breaking-berkeley-police-respond-downtown-for-fight/

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2015/04/10/berkeley-police-respond-to-crowds-youth-fights-downtown/

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/04/13/5-arrested-after-huge-street-brawl-breaks-out-near-berkeley-high-involving-hundreds-of-students/

[cwydro]

3. I've heard Oakland is a rough city.

I could be wrong.

But, something is terribly wrong with this going on in schools.

I feel so sorry for the kids there who probably WANT to study and make something of themselves.

[daredtowork]

4. There has been a recent shake-up in the Berkeley school system as well

There's a more vocationally oriented school called B-Tech that has been having major disruption problems - and that's the school that needs everyone's full support because they are the one more likely to be helping children from homeless families and other breaking-the-cycle-of-poverty issues.

[cwydro]

5. This kind of thing is heartbreaking to me.

I see the kids in the video and wonder how many will even graduate.

And how many will be in prison after (or before graduation.)

And how, sadly, in this fight club/youtube culture - how many do not realize how they are ruining their lives.

Heartbreaking. I truly fear for our country, and for these kids.

[daredtowork]

6. It's even more heart-breaking when you realize that

the campus of a world-class university, with many resources open to the public, is exactly two blocks away from that BART station where the fight occurred.

In the 90s, UC Berkeley was known for having an almost tragically low rate of acceptance for black students (I assume that's changed since awareness of that was fairly high). The city of Berkeley's black population is down to 8% - that's a 13% loss since 2000. My personal suspicion is this has something to do with support for home ownership and then the interest landlords and property owners had in various bubbles that caused chaos for renters. Now that developers are trying to seize the last bit of property, there is also a very strident language about "takers" (worker housing vs. supportive housing, areas of town that need "services", etc.) emerging to justify displacing anyone that doesn't have an iron grip on some property.

On the other hand, imagine if a good education and guaranteed scholarships to UC Berkeley were pipelining these kids into the best jobs that San Francisco and Silicon Valley had to offer. Would they be "takers" anymore? Talk about beating the cycle of poverty!

This is a great moral failure on the part of the City of Berkeley.

[RandySF]

7. It gets rough around the Downtown BART station.

There were more than a few time this past year when I would get to the station around 4pm when I would see groups of teenagers angrily yelling at each other. And once I saw a pretty big fight.

Vallejo seems to have a bigger problem. I know of one parent out there whose elementary school child was stabbed multiple times with a pencil and fights are everyday occurances at the middle and high schools. Staff have either given up on controlling it or are just looking the other way.