Schools scramble to combat 'crisis-level' violence | Kids for Cash: The New Crisis

Friday night lights are a long-standing tradition throughout Pennsylvania. It’s one that’s been celebrated for generations at Luzerne County schools. 

“There was just a lot of school pride. I played basketball, and the cheering section was always full. The girls games, we would always try to go to them. Football games, the cheering section was always full,” recalls Hanover area graduate Ethan Hoolick. 

But now that tradition is being tested by violence in our schools. 

“We're failing them. We're failing the good kids, the kids who want to be there, the kids who want to learn but are afraid to go to the bathroom, the kids who are afraid to walk the halls because of violence,” said Kingston Police Chief Richard Kotchik. 

While the Friday night lights have stayed on at the Wyoming Valley West School District, football fans must now pass through metal detectors as they file into the stadium in Kingston. About a dozen Kingston Police officers are assigned to cover the games, and middle school students aren’t allowed to attend the game without their parents. 

It was this chaos, caught on camera outside the stadium in 2021, that led Kingston Police Chief Kotchik to suggest the change. Officers say students ranging in age from 13 to 16 attacked one another. It caused Valley West to move and reschedule multiple games that season.

“The problems that we started having, the violence that we started having, I said 'we're done'. We had cops assaulted. We had numerous acts of violence that changed the way we do that,” said Kotchik. 

Similar violence has infiltrated the hallways and cafeterias of schools throughout Luzerne County. Chief Kotchik says there were 144 arrests in the Wyoming Valley West Middle School in the 2021-2022 school year, nearly one arrest each school day. 

The problem isn't isolated to communities on Luzerne County's West Side. According to Pennsylvania's 2022-2023 School Safety report, the Greater Nanticoke Area School District has one of the highest numbers of violent incidents per student in the county. Superintendent Dr. Ronald Grevera has worked as an educator for 28 years, and he's spent the past decade at Greater Nanticoke Area. 

“We're talking about weapons. We're talking about assault. We're talking about those types of crimes that are really problematic, and schools are not equipped to deal with that,” said Dr. Grevera.

That same violence has trickled into the city of Nanticoke, as well. Nanticoke City police chief, Michael Roke, says he’s seen an increase in his department’s calls. 

“It's permeated this town over the past five or six years. We're dealing with much more severe crimes,” said Chief Roke. 

School Officials across Luzerne County believe the uptick stems from the lack of juvenile detention beds across Northeastern Pennsylvania. Right now, there's not a single bed in Luzerne County to hold the most violent youth offenders. Instead, juveniles arrested for gun charges, assault, robbery, and fighting in schools are most often sent home. Kevin Perluke is the Luzerne County Probation director and says this issue is at a crisis level. 

“Let's say a teacher was hit. That kid could be there the next day at school,” said Perluke. 

As a result, The Greater Nanticoke Area School District has made changes over the past few years. There's now a strict security policy that includes metal detectors.

“When I first started here 10 years ago, we didn't have cameras, security, or metal detectors. Now that's a part of the principal's daily routine,” said Grevera. 

The way classrooms operate has also changed. 

“For the first time in 28 years, we have teacher shortages. People don't want to go into education any longer because they don't want to deal with the behaviors of certain kids and the way they're acting in classrooms,” said Grevera.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education reports there are currently about 55 hundred teacher vacancies across Pennsylvania. Governor Josh Shapiro addressed this massive shortage in his recent budget address. 

“Ten years ago, Pennsylvania certified nearly 20,000 new teachers every year. Last year, we certified only 5,000 because so few people applied,” Shapiro said in the rotunda in Harrisburg. 

Ethan Hoolick is one of those teachers who left his dream behind. He taught at Hanover Area Junior/Senior High School for about two years before leaving in June 2022. 

“At that point, I had to think, do I want to do this for another 27 years? At what cost?,” asked Hoolick. 

Hoolick isn't the only teacher who left Hanover Area during that time. According to Superintendent Nathan Barrett, 10 percent of the district faculty left that very same year.

“We have folks who don't want to maximize their retirement benefit because they want out,” said Barrett. 

Hoolick first walked the halls of Hanover Area as a student, graduating in 2013. But those same hallways looked much different when he returned to his alma mater six years after receiving his high school diploma.

“It was friendly. You would see boys and girls holding hands, what you'd see in a movie. End of the day the bell rings, kids leave,” Hoolick recalled of his high school days. “Now, it was, we were told every teacher needs to be in the hallway because we don't know what's going to happen.” 

Hoolick started teaching eighth grade English in February 2020. This was just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and the rest of the world. When those schools reopened, Hoolick says everything changed.

“Disciplines got taken away that should have been there and always been there for our safety as teachers. and as that started to happen the kids were catching on,” Hoolick said.

Hoolick says he saw violence in his classroom. He had students lashing out, and he had books thrown at him. What was happening in the hallways was even worse.

“The kid punched over [the teacher] and, in one hit, knocked the kid out. He went back and cracked his head off of the tile, blood started gushing out, and he started to seize,” recalled Hoolick. 

Administrators, at the time, had little help to offer. 

“Here's a staff that gives me everything in the course of a day, and I had to deflate them, that I had no remedy for what they just experienced,” explained Barrett.

Hoolick says there were times he feared what would happen in the halls, even with his own safety.

“As somebody who did enforce things. If you pissed off the wrong kid… that's all it took,” he explained.

Hoolick wasn’t the only teacher experiencing these concerns. The administration says it recognizes the worry, but its hands are tied.

“I don't have my teachers teaching to the best of their ability because they're trying to figure out are they ok? Are they safe?” explained Barrett. 

If teachers try to step in to stop the violence, it could put their jobs in jeopardy.

“The one kid picks up the kid and body slams him. I ran over to scoop him up. I go 'stop, stop' he goes 'he's touching me, he's touching me'. So i dropped him and said 'go ahead beat each other up then'. Because previously teachers were sent home for weeks because a student said 'they touched me,'” recalled Hoolick about a fight outside of his classroom. 

Due to the rise in violence within the hallways, Hanover Area school district began to create changes. Now, there’s a police officer in every building and a no-tolerance cell phone policy. 

“We found there was a tremendous appeal to record violence and post it all over social media sites,” said Barrett. “We haven’t seen a drastic decline because we haven't seen the reward that was there before.”

Hanover Area, alongside the Greater Nanticoke Area, Wyoming Valley West and Wilkes-Barre Area are all near the top of the list of violent incidents per student in Luzerne County, according to that State School Safety report. It's violence, caught on camera, that has led to a zero-tolerance fighting policy at Wilkes-Barre Area High School in Plains Township. Patrick Peters has been with the Wilkes-Barre Area School District for decades, previously with Meyers High School and GAR. 

“If you are not there for an education, if you're there to cause fights and cause trouble. We'll provide you an education, but it won't be in that building,” said Peters.

Patrick Peters, currently, is the principal of the newly established Cyber Academy at Wilkes-Barre Area. The program is the first of its kind in the state, as administrators noticed an uptick in students involved in serious crimes in the community and then returning back to class. 

“I think it has a lot to do with 'On Patrol Live' where you see these kids that are in your classroom or in the community and all of a sudden are involved in crimes and now they are back in your classroom. That brings a lot of attention to it,” said Peters. 

The cyber academy is a court-mandated program through Luzerne County's Juvenile and Family Court. The program comes as the judges, including Jennifer Rogers, say there's little they can do to deter young offenders.

“And when I try to do my job as a judge in Luzerne County and my options are deficient or non-existent, it certainly impedes my ability to do my best job,” said Rogers.  

The Wilkes-Barre Area Cyber Academy provides live instruction and counseling services. 

“The kids see, alright, there is somebody out there. There is somebody that cares, and there is someone that is willing to take the time and the effort to work with me. So, hopefully, they kind of see the light,” added Peters. 

But this program can't solve every problem. Officials say most of these new rules and programs within these school districts are ‘Band-Aid’ solutions  

“You see the frustration on a daily basis, especially coming out of covid. Again it's just another thing that is being put on us, that we as a district has to fix on our own,” said Peters. 

The issues within several of the public schools in Luzerne County have led to a spike in enrollment in private schools nearby. Holy Redeemer in Wilkes-Barre is seeing an increase in public school transfers... Good Shepherd Academy in Kingston reports that it took in more than double the new students it was expecting for this school year. Meanwhile, public school districts continue to put in place measures they hope will reduce violence. Even when it comes at a cost. Hanover Township has one of the highest tax rates in Luzerne County. 

“All of the residents of these surrounding areas are footing the bill for all the unhealthy circumstances that are happening in the wall of this building,” said Barrett.  

However, some of these changes are bringing a light at the end of the tunnel of this crisis. Kingston police now have a school resource officer at Wyoming Valley West Middle School. Arrests have been cut in half over the past two years. This is a change in tradition for these students, all for their own safety. 

“I think this year, I'm starting to see the difference in the middle school. High school, not so much, but in the middle school, we are starting to see the change,” said Kotchik. We do our job to the fullest, and we will do what we have to do to make sure the schools are a safe place.”

While we're focusing on this issue in Luzerne County, this lack of detention beds is at a ‘crisis level’ across 13 counties throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. It’s also a growing problem for the majority of the state as a whole. Action 16’s Melissa Steininger dives into the origin of this problem in part one of this series. Part three revisits the original victims in the ‘Kids for Cash’ scandal and how they are still being impacted to this day.