Can School Safety be a Catch-22?

SCHOOL SAFETY AT LEHMAN

One of the first priorities of a successful school is to ensure that the climate is safe, both for students and the teachers who aim to instruct them. Recently, there have been some claims that there is increased violence at the high school, and we want to know what you think?
While no level of violence should be seen as acceptable, we all must know that there will be fighting at at the high school level. Is there, as some would claim, a marked increase in violence in the school? Or is this just the bellowing of the few who will never be satisfied?
What has your experience been? Have you witnessed fights at the school?
Is the closed 9th grade lunch working to keep students going to their classes?
What can be done to make things better?
Also...
Culturally, children all over the country are linked closely to their hats and/or cell phones. Now while this problem can be addressed with a bit more ease in a smaller school, in a school the size of Lehman, things may not be so easy.

Do we keep, and become responsible for, the hats and electronic equipment of a few thousand students a day? How do you truly hold the children accountable when the parents cosign on them having the phones "for emergency purposes" in NYC?

How do you work to keep Lehman alive, and make situations where you must report data to the city which will close it?

In case you haven't heard, Lehman has been the focus of much discussion politically, and in the media. This site, as well as our wayward brethren at 19credits were mentioned in an article for an education blog, gothamschools.org. The story was then picked up by our local media outlets (the Daily News, NY Times, WCBS Television, etc). But it seems that the machinations of those looking to blight the school in the media may be more productive than they expected. We'll see just what is uncovered in Department of Education investigations, but I would hazzard to guess what is uncovered will be a cast of characters as productive as my last bowel movement.

There is a situation at our school fellow Lehman-ites. We need to think productively as to how to find solutions to an already troubling pattern of behavior. Let us put all of the foolishness aside and come to the table with solutions. Grades may or may not have been changed for the wrong reasons, this is not what we -here- should be discussing. What I would like us to discuss is, in light of the current situation, what should be the protocol on changing grades? What went wrong (as you see it) and what should have been the proper course of action?