🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 07:40:16 -0600, "James Crow"
<dont_let_the_sun_go_down_on_you_bw@h.com> wrote:

>Fights Between Texas, La. Students Worsen
>
>January 31, 2006
>
>SAN ANTONIO (AP) -  When the fights between Texas and Louisiana students
>worsened at White Middle School, its remedy was a field trip to a nearby
>strip mall for a lesson in peace and understanding.
>
>Two blocks from campus in a former pizza parlor, the students were brought
>together to brainstorm ideas, practice tolerance and freely mingle at a
>workshop Principal Rick Canales hoped would ease tensions that have troubled
>the school since 32 Hurricane Katrina evacuees arrived in September.
>
>"What our school needed," said Canales, watching students fasten headbands
>marked with words like "bully" and "jock" during an exercise tackling
>stereotypes, "was a little more kindness."
>
>Fights between displaced students and their new classmates have frustrated
>districts in Texas and other states with large populations of Katrina
>refugees and have eclipsed the warm welcomes that schools insist are the
>norm.
>
>In Houston, which absorbed about 6,000 student evacuees, district officials
>have reported at least a dozen violent incidents. The district reopened
>classes after the Christmas break with a 10 percent increase in campus
>security.
>
>The worst occurred at Westbury High School in December, when 15 evacuees and
>12 local students were arrested during a near-riot in the lunchroom.
>
>At Houston's Jones High School, three were hospitalized and five arrested in
>September after a soda tossed near a group of evacuees sparked a fight
>involving at least 20 students. In Dallas, students at Lincoln High School
>said several fights broke out during a November power outage.
>
>Turf battles, culture clashes and posturing provoke most incidents. Jealous
>boys are ruffled by evacuees talking to local girls. Different music
>styles - Houston's slow "chopped and screwed" remixes verses the quicker
>"bounce" of New Orleans - have created wedges.
>
>Westbury freshman Janet Granados said evacuees antagonize Houston students
>by writing graffiti in textbooks and bathrooms. In San Antonio, New Orleans
>evacuee Terrell Smith, 14, believes classmates unfairly pegged him a
>vagabond outsider from the start.
>
>"The core of the problems was territory," Westbury Principal Eric Coleman
>said. "When you're going to someone else's territory and you're dealing with
>someone who's different, that have different cultures, different
>backgrounds, there is always going to be an adjustment, or a transitional,
>period. That's all this was. It's still going to take time."
>
>Houston, which received more Louisiana students than any district in the
>country, hired the equivalent of 18 additional full-time officers to patrol
>its most volatile campuses. The district also charged 20 administrators to
>flood campuses with adult presence when needed.
>
>"Stuff doesn't happen if we're walking," said George August, principal of
>Jack B. Yates High School.
>
>Houston also rearranged its counseling staff. At Yates, counselors formerly
>packed in one central office now occupy rooms on all three floors to
>increase visibility and access.
>
>North East Independent School District in San Antonio has enrolled about 500
>evacuees from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Mild as the fist fights and
>name-calling at White seemed, Canales quickly organized his daylong unity
>program before tensions grew worse.
>
>Canales chose his 85 workshop participants carefully, a mix of honor roll
>regulars, popular kids, troublemakers and evacuees who could go back and
>influence others.
>
>School counselor Nancy Frase said the cultural gaps are the biggest divide.
>Some evacuees rush into her office afraid of San Antonio kids plotting to
>jump them after school. Others, like Smith, confess they're uneasy with
>Mexican food day in the cafeteria and bring her recipes for gumbo and
>beignets in hopes she'll cook for them.
>
>"People thought we came here trying to take over," said Smith, who plans to
>return to New Orleans by April. "But it wasn't like that. We were just
>trying to come here for safety."
>
>Westbury senior Gilbert Dawsey - who says school ended last week with
>another fight - believes some fights are just unavoidable.
>
>"I don't know what the school can do," Dawsey said. "Sometimes, you just
>can't stop how kids feel."

Please, oh please, join the Share the Negro program. Plenty to go
around, line forms to the right.

Will
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