Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School parents, students and school officials repeatedly have said their school is safe despite two students being punished for making violent threats this month.
“Middle school students are sometimes highly emotional for no particular reason. For some reason, that demographic sometimes thinks everything is unfair to them,” said parent Aicha Thomas on Friday at the school on Mercedes Drive in Hanover, about five miles from the Thurgood Marshall Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
“I wouldn?t leave my kids there if they weren?t safe.”
A student threatened to bring an Uzi to school March 4 and shoot everyone and this Wednesday, another student threatened another student.
Anne Arundel police responded to both cases and both students were disciplined, said school system spokesman Bob Mosier.
Thomas? daughter, Kennedi, a sixth-grader, said she was aware ofthe two incidents, adding that a student in one of her classes threatened a teacher with a baseball bat around two to three weeks ago.
Linda Wilson, parent of a seventh-grader, said she wasn?t happy about police coming to the charter school but felt her child was much safer there than Lindale Middle School in Linthicum, where her children would attend.
Her son attended Lindale Middle where he was beaten up and the school did not adequately respond.
Charter school spokesman Spear Lancaster has said, “Teachers all seem good to go, in terms of enthusiasm and morale.”
At least one employee, however, has spoken out against the school and has said threats and violence have spiked.
But complaints among teachers at the charter school are higher than other middle schools, when adjusted for the size of the school, said Bill Jones, executive director of the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County.
Anne Arundel?s only charter school enrolls around 219 students. It offers a college preparatory program with a focus on math, science and technology.
