A few hours into the first day of school, teachers at Waianae High School scrambled to close their classroom doors and put the campus on lockdown as police responded to a critical shooting in the nearby boat harbor.

The lockdown was eventually lifted, but it made for an unsettling first day, said ninth-grade teacher Angelo Rossetti. Since the incident, students have told him that they don’t feel safe at school and are worried about peers bringing weapons on campus.

“When they’re faced with issues in class, normally, it goes from zero to 100 in a second,” Rossetti said about how quickly fights have escalated on campus.

Waianae has been the site of three separate shootings in the past month, including one that left a 15-year-old and 19-year-old seriously injured. The age of people involved in the shootings — along with an increase in rash and unstable student behavior that Hawaii educators say they’ve seen since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic — has community members worried about the violence spilling onto school campuses.

A West Oahu community meeting on crime prevention and youth well-being drew more than 400 people last week, with many saying they want more done to ensure campus safety. Opinions varied widely though on what that should be.

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Some lawmakers support placing police officers in schools to discourage crime on campus and provide more mentorship to students. Others say there’s too much distrust between students and police and want to turn to after-school programs to provide safe spaces and mental health resources for youth.

Both proposals require more funding and staff than what the police and community organizations say they can currently provide.

While other islands already staff many middle and high schools with armed police officers, staff shortages have prevented similar partnerships between Oahu schools and the Honolulu Police Department, said Rep. Darius Kila, who represents Nanakuli. Some after-school programs have also reduced their services since the pandemic, citing insufficient funding and workers turning to other service jobs that can pay more.

“You have several students who are constantly making these situations unsafe,” Kila said. “And I just want our schools to be safe.”

Are Officers The Answer?

Prior to the pandemic, the Hawaii Department of Education had seen a steady decrease in the number of firearms students brought onto campus each year. School leaders attributed the success in part to annual campaigns reminding students that bringing firearms on campus could lead to a yearlong expulsion.

When schools resumed in-person learning in 2021, the department saw a 10-year high of 39 students dismissed for bringing firearms, including BB and paint guns, on campus. The next year that dropped to 26 students.

Some teachers and principals say school violence has become a greater concern since the pandemic, with students struggling to control their emotions and resorting to fights more frequently after spending months isolated from their friends and only interacting with their classmates online. When students returned to in-person learning in the fall of 2021, some Big Island schools had a hard time stopping student fights and bullying, including one assault at Pahoa High that was spurred by “racially insensitive remarks” and ended with seven arrests.

The Hawaii Department of Education hasn’t yet published its report on student discipline for the 2023-24 school year.

National data is mixed when it comes to student violence since the pandemic. While instances of bullying and assault have declined over the past decade, schools also saw a slight increase in the number of students bringing weapons to campus between 2019 and 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

At Konawaena Middle School on the Big Island, principal Teddy Burgess said campus has remained relatively peaceful in recent years, with major student fights only happening around twice a year. Students are often on their phones and sometimes struggle with social interactions, he added, but they rarely turn to violence.

But Burgess also thinks that having a police presence on campus makes a difference. Konawaena Middle is one of 19 campuses in the state participating in the school resource officer program, which equips Hawaii Department of Education campuses with an armed officer employed by the county police department.

The officers enforce state laws and can arrest students if necessary, but they also double as counselors and teachers, said Jonathan Honda, a sergeant at the Maui Police Department. Many hold presentations on good decision-making and healthy habits or help to address conflicts and mentor students. Occasionally, officers will also serve as sports coaches after school, Honda added.

“It’s actually leaving an imprint on the people who you work with,” said Honda, who served as a school resource officer from 2016 to 2023.

All middle and high schools have security attendants who are employed by Hawaii Department of Education and monitor campuses during the day, said Keith Hayashi, the department superintendent. The attendants can help to resolve fights among students or prevent trespassers from entering campus, he added.

Oahu is the only island without school resource officers, but lawmakers on the Leeward Coast are pushing for a similar partnership between local law enforcement and Nanakuli and Waianae’s two high schools. State Reps. Cedric Gates and Diamond Garcia both introduced bills earlier this year to place resource officers in schools, but the measures failed.

It’s been difficult to permanently station officers at schools when the Honolulu Police Department is chronically understaffed. Michelle Yu, a spokesperson for the Honolulu Police Department, said in a statement that some schools have previously expressed interest in having a resource officer on campus, but the department hasn’t determined how these positions would be staffed or funded.

In the meantime, the Nanakuli-Waianae complex area is considering a pilot program that would utilize retired officers and possibly state sheriffs to staff high school campuses without draining Honolulu Police Department’s reserves, Gates said. The Hawaii Department of Education has not received state money for the initiative, but the complex area superintendent has discretionary funds that could support the pilot later this year, Gates added.

On the mainland, staffing campuses with law enforcement officers has produced mixed results. One study found that school resource officers can decrease violent attacks on campuses but may increase student arrests and suspensions, particularly among students of color.

Pualalea Slover, who graduated from Waianae High School in 2019, worries that having police on campus could result in more discipline for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students. Placing police on campus could send a message to students that they’re dangerous or a threat, and some kids are already wary of officers, she added.

Too Many Latch-Key Kids

At last week’s community meeting, Waianae residents agreed on one thing for certain: middle and high school students have too many opportunities to get in trouble after school and not enough adult supervision.

The Hawaii Department of Education provides after-school programs for children in kindergarten through sixth grade, but older students are often left to fend for themselves. High schools offer sports and other extracurricular programs, but not all families can afford the registration fees or required supplies.

Affordable and accessible after-school programs can play a key role in improving student behavior and keeping students engaged and motivated throughout the day, said Paula Fitzell, president of After-School All-Stars Hawaii. The organization serves 13 schools on Oahu and Kauai, providing students with free tutoring, cooking classes and sports until 5:30 p.m. every day.

Program leaders also work to address instances of bullying or fighting among students. For example, Fitzell said, she implemented a three-day suspension rule for name-calling after witnessing students frequently disrespecting peers and using rude language toward one another after the pandemic.

But staffing shortages often limit the reach of community programs.

Before the pandemic, the Boys and Girls Club of Hawaii served close to 20,000 students ages 7 to 17 on Oahu and Kauai. Last year, the club reached almost 10,000 children, said executive vice president Claudia Fernandez.

The organization, which provides after-school services like college and career planning and leadership classes, is currently short 10 workers, Fernandez said. If she had the staff and funding, Fernandez would expand the club’s programs to include mental health services and vocational training to help teens advance their careers.

“It’s just setting them on a path where they don’t have as many obstacles to face,” Fernandez said.

At some organizations, funding to provide additional support in the aftermath of the pandemic isn’t a guarantee. The YMCA began partnering with middle and high schools on Oahu last fall to offer mental health screenings and classes to help students develop coping skills and healthy habits.

Kyle Ishizaka, executive director of the Kalihi YMCA, said he’s hoping to expand the program to Maui and Big Island using federal funds that will sustain the initiative for another year. But the program’s longevity depends on state funding and the YMCA’s ability to secure a contract with the Department of Health to provide mental health services next school year.

Even four years after the start of the pandemic, he said, counselors are seeing high levels of anxiety and anger from students. Concerns around student behavior won’t go away unless kids receive help, he added.

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This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.