Silver Lining

In the dark clouds of the financial storm closing in on the school district is a silver lining. Sonoma Valley has been focused lately on the presence of gangs, something we’d been reluctant to admit, living as we do amid relative quiet compared to Santa Rosa and other more urban areas.
But the fact is, we do have gangs, with the associated problems of drugs and crime. The experts tell us that gangs offer young teens and pre-teens something they desperately need at that stage of their lives: structure and acceptance. Whether or not they have those elements at home, the transition to middle school at age 10 or 11 is a big change in structure, as students shift from room to room and teacher to teacher, and it’s a big change in acceptance, as they are no longer with the classmates they’ve known for as many as six years.
Two-thirds of the students they meet are older, by a year or two, and bigger, often by a lot, as some have reached puberty but others have not. Moreover, the teachers don’t yet know the new students. There can be more than a hundred new faces going through a teacher’s classroom, among the hundreds of new students on campus. So in the early weeks, at least, it can be chaotic for new students.
Traumatic incidents can happen within the milling student crowds, often involving bullying. Anecdotes from parents and students are reminiscent of “Lord of the Flies,” the William Golding novel about a group of marooned boys in charge of themselves; without the restraint of adult authority – their situation quickly grew ugly.
We hasten to add that we’re not faulting the administration or teachers at our two middle schools. We’re sure they’re working hard with the best of intentions for the students. This is, instead, a structural issue. When authority cannot be exercised, for whatever reason, respect for that authority is lost. And at that point, the protection, structure and acceptance of a gang “family” looks attractive.
We often write about incentives, how people generally make choices that are logical from within their particular set of circumstances. By force of government, we’ve put all these kids together, exposing susceptible children to the allure of gangs. The school board acknowledges that (Policy 5136) and states, “Age-appropriate gang violence prevention education shall start with students in the early elementary grades and may start in kindergarten.”
But it’s asking a lot for children to resist the very elements they might need most in their lives. So we suggest that the new District Reconfiguration Task Force, approved by the school board earlier this week, look carefully at re-instituting the K–8 “elementary” school model at our campuses.
This model was successfully employed here and elsewhere for decades until the middle school fad of the last 30 years took hold. It keeps students in a familiar setting until they are 13 or 14 years old, better able to handle the independence needed for “secondary” school. The students are individually known by teachers and staff, having been at their elementary campus for many years. They have had older students model responsible behavior, and they are less likely to become discipline problems.
And the beauty of this step compared to, say, after-school recreation, is that not only do we reduce the negative – susceptibility to gangs – we also increase the positive – success at school. Will this shift solve the “gang problem”? No, it won’t. But it would be a large step in the right direction. Take several such steps, and the problem can be contained.