Officials urge return of Safe Schools job

At school district headquarters, the bare desktops inside Room 1198 formed the backdrop for a few officials who gathered to send state Department of Education officials a clear message.

State Reps. John Taylor and Bill Keller, along with former Safe Schools Advocate Jack Stollsteimer, were joined by City Controller Alan Butkovitz and Deputy City Controller Harvey Rice, to urge the department to reinstitute the Safe Schools Advocate Office after nine years of working to combat issues of school violence in the district.

The state furloughed Stollsteimer and two other staff employees on Friday, permanently closing the office.

"What they did was illegal at worst and ill-advised at best," Taylor said at a news conference yesterday.

Michael Race, state Department of Education spokesman, said the positionwas unique to the Philadelphia School District.

Philly's advocate, whose responsibilities included providing reports on school violence and to issue recommendations, supplemented the work done by state employees mandated by the 1995 Safe Schools Act, Race said.

"It's not a position or a job - it's a function," he said of the Office for Safe Schools, created within the Department of Education after the Legislature passed the law.

"The entity of the office is done by numerous people."

The law does not explicitly state that duties are performed by an individual, Race said.

But in a letter to Department of Education secretary Gerald Zahorchak, Taylor and Keller - who represent the 177th and 184th Legislative Districts respectively - said that without an independent monitoring system, violent incidents in schools will continue to be under-reported.

In the letter, the politicians also requested that Zahorchak "correct this situation before the start of the new school year."

But Race said that reopening the office is out of the question.

"The 255 furloughs made last week, including the Safe Schools Advocate, are permanent," he said. "We'd be lucky if we could avoid further furloughs."

A budget shortage was the basis for the state's decision, Race said.

Stollsteimer, who ran the office on a budget of $387,000, said he sees it differently.

Meanwhile, proponents for school safety said the most important task is to keep students safe.

"We all want safe schools, and reporting incidents accurately and creating programming is critical," said Shelly Yanoff, executive director of the Public Citizens for Children and Youth.