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Interview With Greg Toppo

Aired October 22, 2003 - 14:16   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The violence in schools did not end at Columbine. This school year has just begun. It's already one of the most deadliest. We haven't been telling you so much about it, but it has. Since August, there have been 18 violent deaths at the nation's public school, and that's more than in the prior two years. This, as local communities face cutbacks.
In a survey of school police, 41 percent said safety funding has actually dropped since Columbine. "USA Today" helped gather that research for an article written by Greg Toppo. He covers the education beat for that paper. He join us from the paper's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Greg, good to have you with us.

GREG TOPPO, "USA TODAY": Good to be here.

O'BRIEN: It's a surprising statistic. We haven't had a Columbine which has captured the media's attention. These have been little incidents which haven't focused national attention. But what's happening is, in a dispersed way, a tremendous amount of violence.

TOPPO: We started noticing these, just as soon as the school year started. Like you said, one at a time. For a while, though in September we were seeing two, three, sometimes four shootings, fights where kids were being really seriously hurt or even killed.

And -- so we decided to take a look at it. And once we started looking through the clippings, it even surprised us.

O'BRIEN: And what are your thoughts on what's at work here? You know, post-Columbine, obviously, sensitivities are very high among teachers, and we hope with parents, to kids who might be troubled in some way or another.

Is there something going on with schools where they aren't addressing this properly?

TOPPO: I think you kind of make a good point. It is sort of puzzling. Schools have been spending a lot of time, money, energy on student well being, on safety. They've been doing this for three and four years, ever since these shootings began.

A lot of things people are saying to me are things like, there's a rising gang activity in a lot of cities. The economy is taking its toll on families. We've had a couple of incidents where there have been, you know, family members killed. Things like that.

A lot of these incidents take place after school, when kids have nothing to do. After school is being cut in a lot of communities and kids are out on the street.

O'BRIEN: This gets balled up in a lot of really big societal issues very quickly. It's hard to separate what's going on in schools from what's happening at home, right?

TOPPO: Yes, absolutely.

O'BRIEN: What -- you know, when you look at the statistics, supposedly more money spent on school safety, does that imply that that's perhaps a Band-Aid approach or maybe some window dressing on something that is more deep-rooted and perhaps schools need to look at this in a more -- maybe the term is holistic -- way?

TOPPO: It's interesting. I talked to a principal in Minnesota just after one of the -- after a shooting there, in which two children were killed. He said something interesting to me. He said, You know, after this, we really had to start taking a look at every kid in our school. And this is pretty big school, 2,400 kids.

He said we had to make sure that there was an adult looking after every kid because they didn't want something like this to happen again. So I think that's the kind of thing that communities are going to start doing. They're going to really be focusing on the well being of every kid, make sure kids don't slip through the cracks.

O'BRIEN: And a final thought here. Is it kind of a sad statement that we are almost sort of blind-sided by the statistics that you uncovered? The fact that unless it's a Columbine-level type of event, we in the media don't pay a lot of attention?

TOPPO: It almost becomes commonplace, I think. One of the reasons we wanted to do the story is because we wanted to just point out the fact that, like Columbine, almost all of these shootings take place in the spring. And this -- obviously, we're only two months into the school year. Want to just let people know that something is amiss here.

Like you say, maybe it's not making headlines, but these things add up pretty fast. And if all goes the way it's going, we're going to -- we may have 50 or 60 kids killed in school this year, which is more than we've had in lots of years, at least a decade.

O'BRIEN: I hope that doesn't happen.

TOPPO: Me neither.

O'BRIEN: Greg Toppo, covers education for "USA Today." Thanks for your time.

TOPPO: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: In the interest of full disclosure, Greg Toppo is the brother of our executive producer, Mike Toppo. A very talented family indeed. Thank you both.

TOPPO: Thanks. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired October 22, 2003 - 14:16   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The violence in schools did not end at Columbine. This school year has just begun. It's already one of the most deadliest. We haven't been telling you so much about it, but it has. Since August, there have been 18 violent deaths at the nation's public school, and that's more than in the prior two years. This, as local communities face cutbacks.
In a survey of school police, 41 percent said safety funding has actually dropped since Columbine. "USA Today" helped gather that research for an article written by Greg Toppo. He covers the education beat for that paper. He join us from the paper's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Greg, good to have you with us.

GREG TOPPO, "USA TODAY": Good to be here.

O'BRIEN: It's a surprising statistic. We haven't had a Columbine which has captured the media's attention. These have been little incidents which haven't focused national attention. But what's happening is, in a dispersed way, a tremendous amount of violence.

TOPPO: We started noticing these, just as soon as the school year started. Like you said, one at a time. For a while, though in September we were seeing two, three, sometimes four shootings, fights where kids were being really seriously hurt or even killed.

And -- so we decided to take a look at it. And once we started looking through the clippings, it even surprised us.

O'BRIEN: And what are your thoughts on what's at work here? You know, post-Columbine, obviously, sensitivities are very high among teachers, and we hope with parents, to kids who might be troubled in some way or another.

Is there something going on with schools where they aren't addressing this properly?

TOPPO: I think you kind of make a good point. It is sort of puzzling. Schools have been spending a lot of time, money, energy on student well being, on safety. They've been doing this for three and four years, ever since these shootings began.

A lot of things people are saying to me are things like, there's a rising gang activity in a lot of cities. The economy is taking its toll on families. We've had a couple of incidents where there have been, you know, family members killed. Things like that.

A lot of these incidents take place after school, when kids have nothing to do. After school is being cut in a lot of communities and kids are out on the street.

O'BRIEN: This gets balled up in a lot of really big societal issues very quickly. It's hard to separate what's going on in schools from what's happening at home, right?

TOPPO: Yes, absolutely.

O'BRIEN: What -- you know, when you look at the statistics, supposedly more money spent on school safety, does that imply that that's perhaps a Band-Aid approach or maybe some window dressing on something that is more deep-rooted and perhaps schools need to look at this in a more -- maybe the term is holistic -- way?

TOPPO: It's interesting. I talked to a principal in Minnesota just after one of the -- after a shooting there, in which two children were killed. He said something interesting to me. He said, You know, after this, we really had to start taking a look at every kid in our school. And this is pretty big school, 2,400 kids.

He said we had to make sure that there was an adult looking after every kid because they didn't want something like this to happen again. So I think that's the kind of thing that communities are going to start doing. They're going to really be focusing on the well being of every kid, make sure kids don't slip through the cracks.

O'BRIEN: And a final thought here. Is it kind of a sad statement that we are almost sort of blind-sided by the statistics that you uncovered? The fact that unless it's a Columbine-level type of event, we in the media don't pay a lot of attention?

TOPPO: It almost becomes commonplace, I think. One of the reasons we wanted to do the story is because we wanted to just point out the fact that, like Columbine, almost all of these shootings take place in the spring. And this -- obviously, we're only two months into the school year. Want to just let people know that something is amiss here.

Like you say, maybe it's not making headlines, but these things add up pretty fast. And if all goes the way it's going, we're going to -- we may have 50 or 60 kids killed in school this year, which is more than we've had in lots of years, at least a decade.

O'BRIEN: I hope that doesn't happen.

TOPPO: Me neither.

O'BRIEN: Greg Toppo, covers education for "USA Today." Thanks for your time.

TOPPO: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: In the interest of full disclosure, Greg Toppo is the brother of our executive producer, Mike Toppo. A very talented family indeed. Thank you both.

TOPPO: Thanks. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com