PETERSBURG, Va. -- Parents and families in Petersburg are hoping to find common ground with the city's school system to prevent violence from happening in the classroom.
Saturday morning, the school district hosted its first community forum to share information regarding safety resources and hear questions, concerns, and suggestions from community members.
Between June of 2022 and now, Petersburg Police have been called to Petersburg High school 107 times. Just this month, multiple fights broke out in the school, leading to the arrest of one student, and another student transported to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Petersburg Superintendent Tamara Sterling said Saturday's community forum is timely.
"We haven't had a lot of weapon-related incidents, but even if it hasn't happened in our school district, it still affects our children. What they hear in the news, what has happened in other school districts, they bring it to school," Sterling said. "We want to make sure that we can have an outlet to talk about it. We want to make certain we collaborate to keep them safe."
Some Petersburg schools do have safety "hardware," like metal detectors and a clear backpack policy.
RELATED: Police have been called to Petersburg High School 100+ times since June
Sterling said upgraded metal detectors are likely coming soon. Petersburg Police Chief Travis Sterling told CBS6 the department is looking at the potential of using grant money to add another School Resource Officer (SRO) to the school.
At the forum, several parents voiced their concerns about a lack of support staff, behavioral resources, and educational opportunities offered in the district.
"My heart is broken, my heart is heavy for our school system in Petersburg," one parent said during an open comment period in the forum. "The main thing that I can see that we are lacking, is funding. We can talk about what we want to do. But if you don't have the money to back it, and if we don't have our community leaders and city council leaders who are willing to feed and sow into our kids, then we have a problem. The problem starts at the top."
"We cannot say that truancy is important if you don’t have people to do the work," another speaker shared.
Educators and law enforcement agreed, they want more communication on what's happening off school property to stop potential violence before it happened there.
Sterling said she hopes the district will host another community forum for students to share their concerns, as well as what they'd like to see in their school to keep them safe.
"We really want to hear from them. These are the students that are going to give us the greatest ideas. Hey, you need to check this out. You need to check this out. This is a new social media platform. Things that are going down are happening here. Things that are going down are happening here. We need to hear from them," Sterling said. "And that's about empowering our youth. They have to have a voice."
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