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Highlands Today

Middle Schools See Gang Member Wannabes

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By MARC VALERO | Highlands Today

Published: March 14, 2008

LAKE PLACID — The writing on the walls may indicate the gangs are here, but middle school administrators say it's the work of gang-member"wannabes."

The recent influx of students serving out-of-school suspensions at Lake Placid Middle is not related to gang activity, according to Bryan.

"Once in a while we will have gang graffiti show up someplace on the campus and we will do our best to address those who are guilty of doing that," Lake Placid Middle School Principal Derrel Bryan said Wednesday. "We do have gang activity in the community and sometimes it spills over on our campus. Nothing that should cause anyone any undue safety concerns."

About 10 or 11 students were in out-of-school suspension Wednesday, which is not unusual at this time of the year, he said.

The school had 21 students out on suspension over a two-day period last week for a variety of reasons: disruptive behavior, defiance of authority and smoking in the bathroom.

"This is a middle school campus; you can have anything from fighting to too many discipline referrals," Bryan said. "It's not anything you wouldn't find on any other middle school campus."

Bryan said, typically, there are more discipline issues in middle schools around January and February. It probably has a lot to do with adolescents, the time of year and the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test season.

"We just encourage our people to always be vigilant," he said. "We have an SRO [school resource officer] on campus; we have two deans and we stay pretty busy."

Hill-Gustat Middle School Principal Chris Doty said, "in every school there are kids doing this [gang] wannabe thing.

"We try to be very proactive when we start to see these kids and they are identifying themselves by a gang name or through tattoos or tagging bathrooms and those kinds of things," he added.
Many times parents don't know their child is in a gang, he said.

As principal of Sebring Middle School last year, Doty held a parent-informational meeting when students started to identify themselves as gang members.

"We will be doing something very similar this year [at Hill-Gustat]," Doty said. "We are working on it right now just to try and help parents recognize these things so that they can be on guard and watch for their children."

Sebring Middle School Assistant Principal Doug Thoburn thinks he's got some some gang wannabes.
"We see some of the writing, like in graffiti sometimes, but we don't see any organized activity," he said.

In his first year at Sebring Middle, Thoburn said of student discipline, it's been a good year and a "refreshing change" compared to the two middle schools he was at in Ohio. But, you never know what tomorrow brings.

Parents are very supportive in addressing disciplinary issues involving their children, he said. "So it never gets to the point where we have to take real serious action."

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