School improves security by firing guards and focusing on the arts
Source: mnn.com
When Andrew Bott became principal of Orchard Gardens Elementary School in Roxbury, Mass., he was the sixth principal to hold the job in seven years. Only about half of the teachers would return to the school each year. Students feared daily for their lives and safety in a school that was plagued by violence and chaos. And the school was ranked in the bottom five of all public schools in the state of Massachusetts.When Bott took over the reins of this troubled school, he did something so unexpected that many called him crazy. He took the school’s entire security budget and reinvested it in the arts. He fired the security guards and hired more art teachers at a school where kids were previously not even allowed to have backpacks over fears that they would smuggle weapons into the school. Can you even imagine the skepticism that Bott was met with when he presented this idea at the school board meeting?
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Read the full article at: mnn.com
