Knife threats alleged at elementary

The Newport Beach Police Department detained a student Thursday on suspicion of possessing a knife at Newport Elementary School, following an investigation into threats that reportedly took place over the last few months.

On Monday, police began interviewing students at the school in response to messages from parents, who reported that a sixth-grade girl had intimidated classmates with a pocket knife on the bus and on campus. Thursday officers detained and questioned the girl suspected of carrying the weapon before releasing her to her mother, Sgt. Bill Hartford said.

“Our investigation is still continuing to determine if there may be other acts committed by the student that were criminal in nature,” said Hartford, who noted that the case would likely pass on to the Orange County Probation Department when resolved.

The investigation has sparked a controversy in the Newport Elementary community, with some parents accusing the school and district of doing too little in response to the alleged threats.

Principal Amy Nagy and Assistant Supt. of Elementary Education Susan Astarita disputed the claims, claiming administrators followed protocol in beginning the investigation on their own.

In December, Nagy said, a student at Newport Elementary told a teacher that an 11-year-old girl had a knife in her backpack. In response, Nagy searched the student’s backpack and had another staff member search her person, but they did not find a weapon. Last week, however, two parents contacted the district alleging other incidents in which the girl threatened students with a knife on the bus. Parent Teacher Assn. President René Powers, whose son sometimes rides the bus, forwarded a message to the school board, and fellow parent Ann Hammerschmidt e-mailed Nagy about her concerns, citing “several instances” in which threats had taken place.

Nagy and Astarita said that before last week no one had contacted them about the incidents on the bus. On Monday morning, Nagy began interviewing students about the allegations. That day, Powers said, she and other parents called the police and asked them to look into the matter as well. She said she was angry when she heard that the school was doing the investigation on its own.

“This is not the principal’s fault,” said Powers, who said she was not the first parent to call the police. “The district has dropped the ball. If somebody is saying a knife was held on a child, the police should be called right away.”

District officials, denied that they had handled the matter improperly. Astarita pointed to the Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s student-conduct policy, which assigns principals the task of investigating possible threats at their schools.

In response to parents’ complaints that the district did not immediately contact the police, Astarita explained that the reports of the knife threat were unsubstantiated as of Monday.

Two weeks ago, administrators at TeWinkle Middle School called officers when they found a student’s Web page that threatened a classmate.

In the case at Newport Elementary, Astarita said, the staff was not sure that a crime had taken place.

“There was a report regarding a knife in a backpack in December, but it was not reported to have been on the bus at that time,” she said.

Nagy, who sent a note home to parents informing them of the investigation, said she was working with police to interview students who had been on the bus. She added that she had not heard any complaints about knife possession at the school since the question about one in a backpack in December.

“Obviously, we care a great deal for our students, and safety is our highest priority,” she said.

The district has taken measures to improve safety at Newport Elementary, installing digital-surveillance cameras on the bus that serves the school. Transportation director Pete Meslin said the district had recently acquired the new cameras and was planning to use them in 20 of its 78 buses.

Newport-Mesa made the decision to install cameras on a case-by-case basis, Meslin explained.

“There are some where we realize there are students with disabilities, and we want to see what they’re doing,” he said. “There are some where just the combination of students makes it difficult for drivers to know everything they need to know.”

Some parents, however, are taking student safety into their own hands. Hammerschmidt, the PTA treasurer, said she had been watching her daughter “like a hawk” at school since the allegations broke, monitoring her over the fence during recess and lunch.

Her daughter, she said, had seen the knife at least once on the bus, though she was not threatened.

Fellow PTA member Mary Schultz, who heads the school’s olympics and Just Read program, said she hoped to put together a committee of parents and police to help enforce the zero-tolerance policy at Newport Elementary. Her son, she said, had also seen the girl with the knife on the bus.

Schultz disapproved of the school’s handling of the incident, but said she hoped to bring some good out of it.

“There are some issues on campus right now, and we’d like to turn all this into a positive move toward a safer school,” Schultz said.