The St. Paul school board has called a special meeting to take input on school safety concerns. The meeting comes after a student was stabbed and killed on February 10 at Harding High School.
There is a board listening session coming up on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. at Washington Technology Magnet School. There is no set length for the meeting, but they do say each speaker will get up to two minutes.
School Board Chair Jim Vue, speaking to WCCO’s Rusty Ray, says that the purpose of the board meeting is to simply hear from community.
“Not only just folks who work for St. Paul Public Schools, but folks who live in St. Paul, students of course, who attend St. Paul Public Schools,” says Vue. “And not only are we listening for how folks are thinking and feeling about the safety in our school buildings, but also possibly some solutions, some things we could do better going forward.”
Vue says the situation is schools is more complex than just putting more police officers in schools.
“What I'm trying to listen to, and hear from the community is a more comprehensive, systemic approach to addressing school safety in our buildings,” explains Vue. "What I'm listening to is practices that we can improve regarding our preventative, services to mitigate conflict. I'm looking at practices and services that we can improve our intervention services, such as when the conflict starts to happen, things we can improve upon in our school buildings.”
Vue adds that they do need to make schools safer.
I think that's evident, evident with the need for the board to engage the community and this isn't something that we, the seven of us can do alone,” Vue said. “You know, safety is something that requires community. It requires different sectors of folks who live in our neighborhoods. It requires different sectors of folks who work in our buildings. It requires all our student demographics to kind of understand the kind of supports that are in there.”
The meeting will be livestreamed on the district’s website. The St. Paul Federation of Educators was among those calling for a special meeting.
In a petition with over 700 signatures, the teachers union said the board and district leaders have not responded to longstanding concerns about ‘the climate in our schools.’
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