A Harlem Park Middle School teacher seethes as she recalls her last day in the classroom, when four sixth-graders beat her, sending her to the hospital in an ambulance. Thirteen months later, she still undergoes therapy for post-traumatic stress syndrome; still feels the pain in her neck, her back and her knees; still wakes at night in terror; still bemoans what she and many other teachers call a breakdown in discipline.
Across town, at Patterson High School a few weeks ago, a 17-year-old boy went on a rampage, screaming profanities, spraying a classroom with a fire extinguisher, hitting a teacher with a chair, hurling a bottle at a school police officer.
At Edmondson-Westside High, a class was halted abruptly last week when a senior was arrested after allegedly bringing a loaded automatic handgun and more than 60 vials of crack cocaine to school.
The violence -- a reflection of the violence that pervades some city neighborhoods -- has become alarmingly routine in some of the toughest of Baltimore's 182 public schools.
Consider:
* Reported gun incidents soared to the highest level in a decade during 1993-1994, according to newly released statistics. These incidents -- assaults, robberies and possession of firearms -- rose 42.5 percent, from 47 in 1992-1993 to 67 last school year, the highest since 1983-1984, when school police reported 122 gun cases.
* Reported assaults with deadly weapons, including guns and knives, nearly doubled, from 56 to 104.
* Armed and unarmed attacks on students, teachers, other staff and school police officers climbed 14.7 percent, to 1,387. No fewer than 302 teachers and other staffers and 63 school police officers were assaulted in 1993-1994.
* Arrests -- for everything from disorderly conduct to assaults with deadly weapons -- rose 7 percent, from 2,609 to 2,790.
The school system attributes the increases, in part, to better reporting resulting from more awareness, anti-violence campaigns, community meetings and a 24-hour hot line to report offenses.
But critics, including the teachers union, lawmakers, some school staffers and school police, call the city's school security and discipline inadequate and say schools are growing more dangerous.
"It's almost beyond control. But it's one of those things we don't want to think about and we don't want to talk about," said Councilman Carl Stokes, chairman of the Education and Human Resources Committee. "So it proliferates. But we need to put it on the table and deal with it."
Mr. Stokes long has advocated smaller classes and now calls for more school police and random searches with metal detectors. He predicts that school safety will become a key issue in next year's city elections. "You ask parents about their biggest concerns in the schools, and eight of 10 of them will say class sizes and safety," said Mr. Stokes, a 2nd District Democrat.
Superintendent Walter G. Amprey, who has repeatedly called school safety one of the key measures by which he and the school system should be judged, declined to discuss the issue. "I don't trust you," he told a reporter, criticizing the "negative focus" of coverage.
Critics accuse his administration of refusing to acknowledge the prevalence of violence or to take enough concrete action to stem it. Some teachers and school police officers say Dr. Amprey has insisted on playing down or ignoring incidents in hopes of avoiding negative publicity. They also complain that he has refused to remove or provide alternative schooling for most of the more violent students.
Nationwide, increasing school violence in urban as well as some suburban and rural districts has prompted tighter security, including use of metal detectors, random searches, more police officers and camera surveillance.
But Dr. Amprey, now in his fourth year as superintendent, has repeatedly resisted such measures, saying they would do little to make schools safer. His administration has instead emphasized prevention efforts such as conflict mediation and high-profile anti-violence campaigns.
In his first year as schools chief, Dr. Amprey responded to the violence that has beset city schools for more than two decades by convening a "safe schools summit" when he asked students what they needed to feel safe and secure. Conflict mediation, anti-violence campaigns and the hot line grew out of the summit.
Last month, the district began its latest safety effort, the first of several "safe haven networks" in East Baltimore. Homes and churches along the routes to schools, each identified with a blue-and-yellow sign and smiling face, offer shelter and protection to children who feel threatened.
Annabelle Sher, who heads the district's Safe Schools Office, also noted that Baltimore has several partnerships with businesses, colleges and organizations such as the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, all targeting violence in schools.
"What we're trying to do as much as possible," she said, "is listen to what the kids say about their own safety. They're entitled to go to school in a safe environment."
Teachers and the union representing them say some schools are anything but safe.
Many teachers complain that they're powerless to discipline or suspend students because of Dr. Amprey's orders to reduce the number of disciplinary cases. The school system has declined to provide statistics on students temporarily removed for disciplinary reasons in 1993-1994. The previous year, 14,106 youngsters received disciplinary removals of up to three days.
Dr. Amprey has strongly discouraged removals, saying they contribute to an annual city dropout rate exceeding 18 percent and hurt academic performance. And the school board recently approved "in-school" suspensions, in which students are separated from other students instead of being removed from school. But, school-based staff members say, the new policy provides few specifics about what those students should do, where "in-school" suspensions should be served and how they should be supervised.
Most teachers in the more violent schools -- some of the middle schools and nine "zoned" high schools, which have no competitive admission as citywide schools do -- view violence as a daily threat, according to a recent survey.
The Baltimore Teachers Union survey last school year of more than 2,200 middle and high school teachers found that more than 90 percent of them called violence a problem in their schools. Seven of 10 middle school teachers and almost half the high school teachers said school violence is worsening.
Half the middle and high school teachers in the survey reported seeing weapons in the previous two years; 21 percent of the high school and 12 percent of the middle school teachers said they had been assaulted; and 39 percent of middle and 27 percent of high school teachers said they had been discouraged from reporting violence.
Linda Prudente, spokeswoman for the 8,500-member union, said: "First and foremost, students and teachers are not getting the message that Walter Amprey takes school violence seriously. Not only are teachers being assaulted by students, but the administration assaults them all over again when they're accused of provoking incidents and not being a good enough teacher to deal with it."
M. Winston Morris, the Harlem Park teacher, shudders when she recalls the October morning last year when she says four girls in her sixth-grade class attacked her. Mrs. Morris, who had taught at Harlem Park for three years, has yet to return to work and, after six months of physical therapy, still undergoes counseling for post-traumatic stress.
She says one student hit her in the left eye, causing her to grow dizzy and faint. In the hallway outside the classroom, students pulled her hairand repeatedly punched her, injuring her left eye, right arm, head, neck, knees and back. Then, she said, she was blamed for "mishandling" the incident, as a result of what she views as a deliberate effort to minimize or dismiss assaults on teachers.
"We have absolutely no power to do anything," she said.
Jon Jacobson, a teacher and chairman of the social studies department at Patterson, also faults the superintendent. "He doesn't want to acknowledge that some students shouldn't be in school. It's a ridiculous effort to try to cover it up."
Teachers lay part of the blame for violence on often-chaotic classes with as many as 45 to 50 students.
But Dr. Amprey repeatedly has balked at mandating smaller classes, as some council members and the Baltimore Teachers Union want. He has said the multimillion-dollar cost of hiring teachers would detract from other efforts to improve schools, forcing cuts in spending for essentials.
Along with smaller classes, the BTU and some education advocates call for more social workers and psychologists to work to prevent violence, more stringent discipline policies, tighter security, and alternative schools and programs for the most disruptive students.
Critics suggest the superintendent's anti-violence strategy lacks focus and continuity.
In his fourth year, Dr. Amprey has yet to appoint a permanent school police chief -- he named his second interim chief, Baltimore police veteran Maj. Linda Flood, in July -- to replace Bernard Stokes Jr., who underwent surgery.
In response to calls for an alternative school for disruptive middle school children, Dr. Amprey set up a program but changed course three times in his four years: The private Foundation for Youth Impact ran an alternative program in 1992-1993; the school system ran it last school year; and recently, Woodbourne Center Inc., a private, nonprofit company, became the latest operator.