Opening Remarks from U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd
"Building Safe Schools and Healthy Communities: The West Virginia Response"
West Virginia University
August 21, 1999

With children across the state gathering up their sharpened pencils and three-ring notebooks, and filling their new backpacks with these quintessential supplies for the start of the new school year, it seems the opportune time to gather together and review the problem of youth violence in the classroom. 

A new school year is upon us, with all its bright potential for learning.  And while most students welcome the chance to see their friends again, and to again immerse themselves in the business of learning and growing, we, as parents, educators, and legislators cannot help but reflect upon the memories of sudden, violent death that have visited many American schools. 

Recognizing West Virginia's already strong violence prevention programs, it is my hope today to further enhance our collective knowledge of the efforts underway throughout the state to address this troubling problem.  Moreover, it is my hope that this symposium will serve as an opportunity to look at what more needs to be done to better protect our West Virginia teachers and children from classroom violence.

Given the most serious nature of the challenge we face, it is fitting that we call upon a wide range of experts to focus on new deterrents and prevention measures to stop this scourge of outrageous behavior before it ever begins, and to find solutions to school violence.  And, in so doing, we must be ever mindful that this problem transcends the schoolyard.  It is more pervasive.  It reaches beyond the schoolhouse doors, into our communities and into our homes.  Therefore, we must all work together if we are to maintain healthy communities and safe schools for our children. 

With that goal in mind, today, I have invited two outstanding panels of West Virginia citizens to share with us their views, and to guide us as we seek out additional prevention tools to keep violence from creeping into West Virginia schools.  It is my hope that the experience and knowledge of these men and women will enable us to build upon existing programs and to create new prevention approaches.  Our first panel is composed of a parent, a student, an educator, and representatives from law enforcement agencies who will highlight some of the school-based innovations that are currently underway across the state.  During our second panel, we will hear from faith-based leaders, mental health experts, journalists, and members of the West Virginia Legislature.  I look forward to the remarks of our ten panelists later today.  Furthermore, we are all privileged to have Dr. James Alan Fox, the former Dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Massachusetts, here to discuss with us some of his vast research on the topic of youth violence.  I thank Dr. Fox for making this special trip to West Virginia to join in today's event.

I have long been concerned about the increasing incidence of violence in the classroom and have supported numerous efforts to combat disruptive and dangerous behavior and strengthen discipline for all students.  Beginning in 1994, when Congress passed the Improving America's Schools Act in an effort to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, I offered two amendments aimed at reducing school violence.  First, the Congress adopted my proposal directing local school districts to refer to the criminal justice system any student who brings a weapon to school.  My second amendment, which Congress also approved, required the U.S. Secretary of Education to conduct the first major study of violence in schools since 1978.  In July of last year, the National Center for Education Statistics, in concert with the Department of Education, released the results of this study, revealing that in a snapshot of the 1996-1997 academic year, more than half of U.S. public schools reported at least one crime incident, and one in ten schools reported at least one serious violent crime during that year.

In the wake of the terrible tragedies at Columbine High School and at other schools throughout the nation in recent years, we are reminded of the seriousness of this problem. These events clearly signify the need for unity and cohesiveness of all players to ensure that classrooms are safe places for every student and teacher.  With this in mind, I recently joined in authoring legislation to establish a National Commission on Youth Violence tasked with the formidable challenge of examining the many root causes feeding this new rash of violent behavior which has infected our nation's schools.  This idea has been integrated into the Senate's version of the juvenile justice legislation currently pending before a joint House-Senate conference committee.

Today, I bring home to West Virginia this notion of gathering forces, sharing ideas, and learning from one another, as we strive to piece together the many facets of school violence.  As I reflect on my own days in a two-room schoolhouse, I often wonder what has transpired in these intervening years of enhanced learning resources, modernized school facilities, and leading-edge technology to convert what were once orderly and tranquil classrooms into the virtual battlefield that many classrooms have become today.  I am deeply concerned that we may be approaching a day when our nation's students spend more time in the classroom worrying about their own safety than their grade-point average, a day when teachers are too preoccupied with their own fear of violence erupting in the classroom to properly teach students the basic grammatical structure of a sentence or the principles of the Pythagorean theorem.  Today's children deserve a safe environment for learning just as much as earlier generations did.  In fact, in today's high-tech-focused workforce, a good education is even more essential to success.  We must do all that we can to create such an environment, and to provide today's children with every opportunity to excel academically, free from violence or the fear of violence.

We are nearing a new century -- one in which cures to deadly diseases may be found, new discoveries in the areas of computer science, technology, and space may be made, but we will need a well-educated, ambitious, strong crop of educated Americans to lead us into and out of the next millennium.  That simply cannot happen if discipline and decorum in our schools continue to erode, and if mayhem and murder become common-place.

I have convened this forum today because I consider school violence to be one of the most critical problems facing our nation.  And as we approach this Labor Day, it is important to remember that school violence can happen again and that it can happen anywhere.  It is my strong hope that we can work together to maintain the safe schools that West Virginia knows today, and to keep school violence from ever blighting the landscape of our state.  Personally, I feel a deep empathy with the thousands of parents who may be approaching this particular school year with the worst kind of worry and trepidation - - worry for the safety of one's child at school.  It is my hope that the work that we do here may, in some small way, alleviate some of that worry, and make a contribution towards more secure schools.

Here is to a productive and informative day, and, most importantly, a day of reflection on what every one of us here in this auditorium can do to give a safer classroom back to our students and to our teachers.  Let us all find the strength to reach across the lines that might divide us and find solutions that may save lives.  I thank you all for joining me here today.