The crackdown on beatdowns

Arroyo administration takes steps to ensure a safer school environment for students.

Angel Rodriguez, Staff Writer

Within the first weeks of school, roughly six to seven fights have broken out on campus resulting in thirty-one suspensions. Hypothetically speaking, that would be one suspension a day.

Many reasons can contribute to the physical altercations that have happened between students on campus.

“A lot of the reasons why these fights start is because of issues with boyfriends and girlfriends. Another issue would be gossip. Not everybody likes being talked bad about. It then gets confrontational to the point where one might take it a bit further,” said Dr. Joaquin Valdez, Assistant Principal of Student Services.

The huge goal for the administrators since then has been to prevent fights from occurring on campus. A multi-step prevention program is in the works to make Arroyo a safer place.

Valdez said, “We communicate with administration and try to prevent anything involving a student. We have our campus supervisors also be more vigilant when they’re outside as well. Having more teachers around during nutrition time is also helpful. If it’s brought to our attention, we will reach out to that student or students and help smooth things out. We’ve addressed that fighting is a problem and we need to nip it in the bud before it gets bigger than it already is.”  

Safety and security for students is an important issue for parents. The question of whether Arroyo could use more supervision is brought to attention when fighting has become a concern on campus.

“That’s one of the things we really tried to ensure in the beginning. We could absolutely use more supervision. All schools can use more. But it’s based on the number of students on campus. That’s why teachers rotate shifts during nutrition. We have campus supervisors, our SRO, our counselors, and the administrators here at Arroyo. We can’t be at all places at once, but we scatter around as much as we can.We work with what we have,” said Valdez.