Re: Campus Safety at O'Connor H.S.
             First, I want to thank you for the opportunity to serve on this committee. In this memo I'm going to talk about gangs and their destructive influence on public schools and their students. Every child has the right to an education in a safe and secure environment, and violence in our nation's schools seems to come as a threat to this right. Gangs in schools have spread widely throughout the nations high schools in resent decades. This has caused many problems among students, families, faculty of schools, and residents of the areas. In recent estimates, almost three-fourths of the United States teens are afraid of violent crimes amongst their peers.
             In a survey given by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 49.1% of high school students saw a weapon in their school; of those 49.1% weapon reports by students 57.2% were cutting instruments (knives, etc.) and 30% were firearms. In this survey 13.9% confessed that they had taken a weapon to school, with 9% of the full sample bringing plain cutting instruments, 2.5% saying that they brought firearms, 1.3% bringing "other" arms and 1.1% didn't identify. Additionally, 1.4% of the students state that they always take their weapon to school; 2.1% say they take a weapon frequently to school and 9.9% say that they took their weapon on an occasion to school. (www.aclu-sc.org). A 1997 Youth Gang Survey by the National Youth Gang Center also showed us that approximately 4,712 cities and counties (51% of all respondents) reported active youth gangs at their schools (www.ncjrs.org). A different survey showed that over 650,385 gang members in 18,267 gangs are active, also it is estim!
             ated that 815,856 gang members are active in 30,533 gangs in areas not responding to this survey (http://home.netcom.com/). In a survey during the school year 1995-96 in Pennsylvanian
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