The San Benito High School District Superintendent disagreed
with a 2004-2005 Civil Grand Jury report last week, saying the
district already has gang prevention and intervention services in
place and that gang problems should be addressed by the entire
community, not just area schools.
Hollister – The San Benito High School District Superintendent disagreed with a 2004-2005 Civil Grand Jury report last week, saying the district already has gang prevention and intervention services in place and that gang problems should be addressed by the entire community, not just area schools.
The high school district’s response comes on the heels of what Hollister law enforcement officials are calling a “spike” in gang activity.
In June, the San Benito County Civil Grand Jury recommended the high school district and several other local school districts “develop a plan to approach the issue” because the schools lacked formal gang prevention programs.
In the district’s formal response, released last week, Superintendent Jean Burns Slater wrote that such a plan would be “most advantageous if it was a community plan rather than individual school and district plans.”
“(A) high unemployment rate, a lack of community resources, dedicated interest and time for youth, relaxed standards and permissiveness related to the accessibility of alcohol and drugs, and minimum consequences for delinquent behavior, all contribute to a ‘gang issue,'” Slater wrote.
The report helped raise community awareness about the issues surrounding gang activity, but many of the programs and strategies suggested by the grand jury were already in place at San Benito High School, Slater said Monday.
Slater was specifically concerned about many law-breakers getting off easy after committing serious crimes, which she believes is evidence of a “permissive” community attitude toward drugs and alcohol.
“I just don’t feel we enforce the laws that are available to enforce, especially when it comes to drugs and alcohol,” she said.
It’s not only kids who are not being let off easy, she said. Slater added that when parents serve drugs or alcohol to students they should also be charged and prosecuted to the full-extent of the law.
Slater also disagreed with the grand jury’s conclusion that its recommendations be applied to all schools. “It would be appropriate to review findings based on individual school districts rather than paint all districts with the same recommendation,” Slater wrote.
In the district’s response to the grand jury, Slater included a list of 14 prevention activities the school already has in place, in addition to six intervention and treatment activities. The school’s prevention efforts included hiring a resource officer from the San Benito County Sheriff’s Department to work with students and working closely with local law enforcement in the Impact Program, a nine-week effort designed to help students who are on probation.
“We feel that we’ve been very active in suppressing gang activity,” Slater said.
The Hollister Police Department has seen a recent spike in gang activity highlighted over the past week by three gang-related attempted murders, police spokesman George Ramirez said Monday.
“We’ve definitely seen a rise and our neighboring communities have also seen a rise,” he said. “We can’t arrest our way out of this problem. We need to have more education, prevention, intervention and suppression.”
San Benito High School has been working closely with the Police Department, Police Captain Richard Vasquez said.
“The school takes a very proactive stance on gang violence,” he said. “We communicate on a daily basis. I think (school officials) are doing their part from what I see.”
Brett Rowland covers education for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or br******@fr***********.com
