CAMBRIDGE, Md. - Several altercations at some Dorchester County Public Schools got the attention of the school board Thursday night.
The superintendent and principals discussed the issue of several altercations in school with parents, faculty, and students, Thursday night.
Superintendent David Bromwell says Cambridge South Dorchester Highschool and Mace's Lane middle are the two most problematic within this situation. He says kids are bringing their issues with others into school.
Bromwell explained, "If you and I have a disagreement, its originating in the community but we're waiting to get to school to solve it. Now there's many reasons for that. I think our young people are quite smart and realize if I do this at school it's going to be taken care of really quick and it's probably a little safer than if it happens in the community."
Bromwell also added that they hosted this meeting to make this aware before anything serious happens. He says, "What is really concerning to us is these are not altercations that are a pushing and a shoving and somebody gets between someone. These are really altercations where people are trying to hurt each other and we got to stop."
Parents and students say they attended the meeting because they know it's a problem.
"Its just a lot of commotion going on. It's hard for them to learn." says Myisha Johnson. She added, "The gang violence really concerns me. I'm just trying to see what we can do to not bring that into the schools."
CSD student Donnel Cephas says its happening during their free periods called 'power hour'. He says, "yeah ever since this new power hour thing has come, theres been a lot of fights."
During the meeting, parents say some things really stuck with them.
Parent Shay Lewis-Sisco says, "The statistics were really alarming to hear that here at CSD last year the number of arrests were 15 for the entire school year. And we're just at week five of the school year and we're already at 19 arrests."
One suggestion that was brought up was twilight school. Which would be a type of evening school where students would come to school around 3 p.m.
Ashley Harris says, "The one thing is the twilight high school. That's something that they want to introduce. So just I'm curious as to how that would work. Would that be a successful model for students?"
As far as the ideas that floated around tonight like the night school, no decisions have been made. Bromwell says this might not be their only meeting. He says they could be taking this presentation to the north side of Dorchester County.