When the ninth-grade boy got ready to go to school at Chesapeake High on the morning of Feb. 7, he packed his books and a loaded .22-caliber handgun.
And when administrators caught him with the gun at the end of the school day, he told them he was afraid, that he'd been threatened by two other students. He had not told his teachers or principal about the threats. He figured he'd protect himself by bringing a handgun from home.
The boy walked around school all day with the handgun tucked intothe pocket of his jacket. He said he walked in fear. At some county public schools, many students share the same fears.
Youngsters at some county high schools say they come to class every day fearing a fight awaits them in the corridors. Disputes triggered at home, in theshopping mall or the housing project play out in school more violently than ever before, by students more heavily armed than ever before.The epidemic of violence that has been infecting school systems across the country is striking here, even in schools once thought immune to such problems.
School officials say the trouble is being causedby a small number of students, and that no schools are completely insulated from an increase in fighting, often over status items like expensive athletic jackets and shoes.
"We're really shocked in this community," said Broadneck High School Principal Lawrence Knight. "Wehad no indication of the level of savagery that could be committed by one youngster against another."
Knight referred to one former student's arrest in the stabbing death of another former student on a street in Cape St. Claire last month.
"Violence," Knight said. "is increasing in the schools and away from the schools. It's in their communities, in their favorite gathering places, in the malls.
"We're looking around now to see what other time bombs are about to go off. There may be another student at the snapping point. With the availability of weapons, a student could be carrying an Uzi or an automaticweapon just to get back at somebody."
The 15-year-old boy caught with the handgun at Chesapeake High last month was expelled and charged by county police with illegal possession of a weapon. Administrators searched the boy and confiscated the gun after they got a tip fromanother student. More and more, public school officials find themselves searching students and confiscating weapons.
During the 1988-1989 school year, school officials confiscated 32 weapons. The figure jumped 20 percent the next school year to 39 weapons. Last school year, 40 weapons, including guns, knives and the martial arts weapon numchuks, were taken from students.
This year, in January alone, the most recent month for which statistics were available, 17 weapons were confiscated and 21 physical assaults reported, said Huntley Cross, a special assistant to the superintendent who investigates such cases. Physical assaults serious enough to result in suspensions rose 10 percent in 1989-1990, to 176, then dropped last school year to 169.
Even more chilling than the number of incidents is the intensity of the violence, several teachers and administrators said.
"There's definitely an increase in severity," said Cross. "The kind of fights we used to have in high school are not the kind of fights they have now. Now, when they get into a fight, there is a definite intent to hurt the other person, to do physical harm."
Tom Paolino, president of the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County, said teachers at some schools fear for their safety and for their students'.
"Teachers are worried about the increase in incidents of students coming to school with weapons," he said. "It used to be just fists, now there'sweapons. It used to be two students (fighting), now it's 10. . . . Five years ago, if there were 200 cases, maybe 10 percent involved weapons. Now, it's maybe 30 or 40 percent. And that's scary."
Many students face the fear every day. They live with the threat of violence. They understand that violence has become a way of solving problems,a way of life.
"If someone keeps in your face, you get sick of it. You have to do something. You have to knock them down," said Candace Clark, an Annapolis Middle School eighth-grader.
Fights begin over verbal insults, destruction of property or boyfriend-girlfriend rivalries. Often at the slightest provocation, students will gather friends and relatives for a fight to get even, students say.
"All youhave to say is 'mother' or 'father' and the fighting starts," said Annapolis Middle School Principal Kevin Dennehy. "They rally around and egg each other on."
Many students find this behavior is encouraged at home, said North County High School Principal William Wentworth. "Kids are being told if someone says something you don't like, you don't have to take it. You can hit them, punch them."
At Southern High School, tension between a group of black students and a group ofwhite students resulted in four brawls on school property in October.
"The police were called in to talk to the parents," said Susan Smith, president of Southern's Parent-Teacher-Student Association. "Rumors were rampant that weapons were involved. Most of the rumors are blown way out of proportion. But the principal brought in weapons-sniffing dogs just in case."
The dogs turned up nothing, she said, but parents were still rattled. More than 200 showed up at the PTSA meeting the following month. Usually, Smith said, about six parents attend.
In many cases, school administrators find themselves trying tocontrol fights that start outside the school.
On March 10, a continuing dispute between two Annapolis public housing communities, Newtowne 20 and Eastport Terrace, erupted into a brawl at Annapolis Senior High School. The fight had started at the Annapolis Mall over the weekend and continued at the school the following Tuesday, said Principal Laura P. Webb.
Students from the rival factions said the meleebegan after a group from Eastport Terrace taunted Newtowne 20 youthsabout their clothing and shoes, calling them "dirty" and "crack heads."
"A boy said something bad about the neighborhood, so they wentand beat him up," said Wendell Williams, a 16-year-old student from Bywater, a subsidized Annapolis co-operative town house community.
"Then the other neighborhood had to (fight). See, that's how it is. If one of your buddies gets jumped, then you go."
Two students were expelled, and five were suspended. The expelled students, a 16-year-old from Eastport Terrace and a 17-year-old from Newtowne 20, were arrested and charged on juvenile citations with disturbing school activities.
In a society fed a daily dose of violence on television, in movies and in popular music, school administrators say they feel hard-pressed to keep it outside school doors.
"We're dealing with a cultural issue here," Cross said. "The kids constantly see violence portrayed as the way things are resolved. To think a child turns all that off at 8 a.m. when he walks into one of our middle schools or high schools is unrealistic."
And when the students walk into school,thinking about the violence that may await as the day begins, they often find they pay far less attention to their studies.
"It bothers me a whole lot," said Candace, the eighth-grader at Annapolis Middle School. "You come to school to learn, not to be worried about this.. . . I tried to stay out of it. I tried to ignore it, but I got in it more and more. This pressure is going on a lot."
"It takes yourmind off what the teacher is saying," said David Campbell, 13, an Annapolis Middle School eighth-grader.
And when student aggression crosses the line into school settings, discipline should be swift and stern, parents and teachers agree.
But all too often, they say, the discipline is anything but tough. The most frequent punishments -- referrals to the principal's office, detention and suspension -- havevirtually no impact on the most difficult students.
"The first time it happens, something serious has to be done. And I'm not talking about a three-day suspension," said Lydia Smithers, an English teacher at Annapolis High. "Students have to see there are serious consequences to their actions."
Even students complain about peers who aresuspended for fighting or bringing weapons to school, only to returna few days later, bragging about their "days off."
"Suspension isnot a punishment if the child is out at the mall having a ball," said Sitia Chew, an eighth-grader at Annapolis Middle School.
More than one principal said schools cannot be held responsible for parents who refuse to discipline their children, even after they've been suspended.
But other administrators, recognizing that many youngsters come from single-parent households where parents must work, acknowledge the difficulty of keeping unruly teen-agers at home when parents aren't there to supervise.
Stanley Stawas, principal of Meade High School, said he appointed a committee of teachers this year to study the feasibility of starting "in-house" suspensions.
"So it's not avacation, work would be provided, and they would do the suspension right at school," Stawas said.
Bringing a gun to school almost always results in expulsion, which requires a student to stay away from school for at least one semester or 18 weeks, depending when in the school year it happens. All serious infractions, including fighting or carrying knives, are decided on a case-by-case basis.
But even expulsion rarely means a student is put out of school permanently. In fact, parents, teachers and administrators say students who appeal expulsions to the school board, as allowed by state law, are routinely allowed back. Students who return to school are usually transferred to another school, administrators said.
Many parents and teachers contend that the policy is far too lenient.
"A kid brings a gun to school and he gets back in? It's ridiculous," said a teacher who asked not to be identified.