Harrisburg City School District spokeswoman Kirsten Keys, acting principal Sieta Achampong, and academy director Keith Edmonds spoke with reporters this morning about a student fight earlier in the week.
Harrisburg school district officials today said that a misunderstanding between students triggered the brawl that drew police to John Harris High School on Monday, resulting in three student arrests and multiple suspensions.
Administrators also said that the incident would not jeopardize a new community policing partnership, which they jointly announced with the Harrisburg Police Bureau on Friday.
Principal on Assignment Sieta Achampong spoke to reporters at a press conference at the school today, where she dispelled rumors that Monday’s fight was a result of racial tensions between Puerto Rican and African American students.
“We have had issues in the past on the campus and even in some elementary and middle schools with different races, but this was not a race relations fight,” Achampong said. “We had students of the same cultural group fighting one another, so it was not a race fight. It just happened to be perceived as such.”
Achampong and other administrators planned to address these questions at a community forum tonight at John Harris, but it has been postponed to an undetermined date due to inclement weather.
The district’s ongoing internal investigation has revealed that the fight began after a group of students believed they were being secretly recorded by their peers, Achampong said. That escalated into a fight among female students, she said, before male students joined the fray.
Achampong said the district has proof that the students who thought they were being videotaped were mistaken and called the incident precipitating the fight “a big misunderstanding.”
Nonetheless, it did draw police from three agencies to the high school campus on Market Street, where officers used pepper spray to quell the fighting students. One student was arrested for resisting arrest and punching an officer.
It was the first time that Harrisburg police responded to an incident on a school campus since Friday, when district and police leaders announced a new “open door policy” for officers across the district.
Until recently, officers had to follow the same visitor policy as members of the public, arranging school visits with advance notice and permission from district officials.
Now, they can enter school buildings any time they want to talk to students about public safety. Achampong said today that district Superintendent Sybil Knight-Burney will release more information about the community policing partnership in the near future, but it appears the open-door policy for officers is still in place.
Officers have visited the school campus since Monday to engage students, and both Achampong and district spokeswoman Kirsten Keys said that officers are still welcome in all school buildings.
Achampong confirmed that three students were arrested on Monday, and an unknown number were also issued citations.
The district is still reviewing witness statements and security footage as part of its own investigation into the incident, which could result in in-house disciplinary action against students.
The brawl on Monday was the school’s first major behavioral incident all year, Achampong said. She said the school had experienced a period of relative peace thanks to consistent discipline and engagement with students and parents.
She also said that several students prone to fighting “are no longer with the district,” but declined to say how many had been suspended or expelled.
“We as a team of administrators, with our teachers and counselors, are working hard to be consistent,” Achampong said. “We’re trying our best to be consistent, to follow up, and set expectations and let children know we’re going to follow through.”
Since this summer, Achampong has split her time between Sci-Tech High School, where she technically works full-time as principal, and John Harris High, where she serves as a “principal on assignment” four days out of the week.
Achampong was assigned duties at John Harris this summer after former Principal Lisa Love was put on leave and later reassigned pending an investigation into grading procedures.
District officials could not say on Thursday whether a full-time principal would be assigned to the building following Monday’s incident. Achampong will continue to spend four days a week at John Harris and one day at Sci-Tech, she said.
The principal position is not advertised on the district’s online job board. Knight-Burney was unable to comment on principal staffing through a spokeswoman on Thursday.
