BUFFALO, N.Y. — From questions about the leadership of Superintendent Dr. Kriner Cash to whether there should be more school resource officers assigned in schools, the Buffalo Board of Education is looking into reports of more violence plaguing the school district.
The stabbing and shooting last week in the parking lot of McKinley High School dominates the headlines.
But from Riverside High School, a teacher from the school attended the Wednesday evening school board meeting described what has happened there with violence and pain as well.
Mark Bruno said the school was recently saddened with the loss of a Riverside student murdered in the community over a social media dispute. But he added other incidents in the school in the past month.
"We've had armed intruders that were not students who tried to enter the building with a knife on February 2," Bruno said. "The same day as the McKinley shooting and stabbing, we had a huge brawl during dismissal inside the school building."
Board member Larry Scott heard it all and says the district is looking at ways to beef up security beyond the two additional school resource officers who will be at McKinley during arrival and dismissal.
Scott acknowledges that the district has received hundreds of millions of dollars combined in additional state aid and federal COVID pandemic recovery funding, and he feels more can be done.
"We have increased security since the start of the year," Scott says. "There's definitely ... funds that have been directed to hire school security guards, and we have done that. Has it been completed across the district? No."
But then what about school resources officers in addition to the existing district security staffers.
"We only have 10 of those through the BPD that aren't essentially positioned in a particular building. They are just kind of on call if something comes up," Scott said.
Scott added: "The superintendent brought up SROs and asked me specifically, 'Are you asking for more SROs?' And I said, 'Personally, I believe that that's something that needs to be requested from the mayor.' So he took that, he didn't say no; it seemed as if that's something he's going to act on."
The school district said no comment on the additional SROs question. And Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said: "We have not talked about adding additional school resource officers at this time, but we're open to looking at that. But to do that, there will be a cost for that."
Also during Wednesday night's school board meeting board, members voted to request a detailed report from Cash of what happened at McKinley and why.
"We wanted to make sure that we put all these things in writing, whether they were concerns from parents or staff or students or the general community, as to what happened there and what we can do going forward," board president Louis Petrucci said.
Board Member Scott said: "I do think as a district, we need to be more present and more responsive to the stakeholders. All of them."
Hearing that and hearing community concerns and complaints about the Buffalo schools, 2 On Your Side asked: Does this indicate potentially a crisis of leadership with Dr. Cash?
Scott responded: "I'm not able to directly answer that question. What I will say is that we're paying attention to it. There are conversations that are being had, and that is what then produced this letter to the superintendent for a thorough investigation. He is our employee, so any decisions that are made or evaluations that are done on the superintendent can't be done publicly."
We also asked Petrucci, is there a crisis of leadership when it comes to Kriner Cash? Is it something that needs to be discussed?
"So right now Dr. Cash has a contract in place until June of next year," Petrucci said. "My goal as president is to make sure that we fully execute that contract. But it also means that we have to make sure that he addresses the concerns of both the community and the board going forward. Yeah, I've heard those concerns as well, and we try to be responsive."
2 On Your Side also asked: When we hear parents tell us that their students are afraid to go to McKinley, do you feel that Dr. Cash has the leadership ability to change that perspective?
Petrucci replied, "I do."
We requested an interview with the superintendent. A district spokesman would only say he would take questions during his scheduled town hall meeting on Thursday evening.