Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 6, 1994                   TAG: 9403050011
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAKE IT BINDING: NO GUNS IN SCHOOL

SADD students, parents and school administrators sign contracts agreeing to do their part to discourage teen drinking and driving. Now the National Association of Secondary School Principals is asking the same parties to recognize the danger of guns in schools, and to act against it.

An increase in violence in schools, where parents once could assume their children would be safe, has contributed greatly to the public's growing fear of crime. With good reason. Once children come to expect school hallways to be dangerous places, or take gun possession as a measure of manly credibility, more guns and other weapons will be brought to school and the spiral of violence will worsen. And this is to say nothing of the effect on schools' educational mission.

To avoid, or reverse, this scenario, students must have no reason to fear guns in school - and mere assurances from parents and teachers won't make that so. Spurred in part by the lobbying of James Dyke, secretary of education in the Wilder administration, Virginia has provided schools with legal tools to protect the innocent.

Juvenile court judges, under crime legislation signed by Wilder last year, have to inform school superintendents when students are convicted of offenses involving weapons. Also, superintendents now have leeway to exclude students who've been expelled from other school districts.

These are reasonable regulatory responses. But principal association's proposal would carry the effort to disarm student bodies beyond official actions taken after violence has occurred. It would carry the effort to the students, and right on into their homes. It would make a start at prevention of mayhem, instead of treatment for wounds inflicted.

The association is mailing to every high school and middle school in the United States contracts that would join students, their parents and school administrators in a pact to get guns out of their schools. Students would agree not to bring in weapons, and to report any they see. Parents would agree to teach their children about the dangers of guns and to keep them out of their hands. Schools would agree to set up anonymous means to report handguns - an important measure. (With almost every in-school shooting come reports that other kids knew so-and-so had a weapon, but didn't want to snitch.)

Such contracts won't, of course, cure an illness imposed by society on schools. But they could help.

Guns in the hands of children - not out in the woods to hunt with Dad, but in the hall to avenge adolescent slights - cannot become the status quo. Juvenile court judges and superintendents aren't going to win this fight by themselves. They need the troops on their side: everyone who wants school to be a safe place for learning.