Fights and altercations involving young people also have taken place inside and outside of the Main Library downtown, which has seen a large increase in police calls for service this year, primarily due to proactive patrols.
Multiple community members and leaders on Tuesday said they believe the fights and bad behaviors being displayed by young people at a few library facilities are symptoms of deeper problems of violence, hopelessness and division in the community.
Some speakers at the forum repeated a years-old call for local young people to have more and better after-school opportunities, programs and resources. Some attendees said young people must be part of the solution and their voices need to be heard and considered so the community knows what they are thinking and what they need.
Multiple community members said they believe one way to cut down on problems is to get students on buses to head home right after school, instead of having them hang around at the libraries. Belmont High School is next door to the Southeast Branch.
“I’m deeply worried that the RTA is not sending the buses to pick these kids up,” said Joe Winters, 41, a Dayton resident who often patronizes the Southeast Branch. “You’ve got a lot of kids at the Southeast Branch who don’t want to be there — they are waiting for a bus.”
Will Smith, president of the Dayton Public Schools Board of Education, said library facilities are where young people tend to congregate these days because they no longer have as many community centers and other places to go in their neighborhoods.
“This is Bomberger now ... this is Westwood, because we don’t have those spaces,” Smith said, referencing community centers around the city that shut down. “If we are going to really come up with solutions then we have to stop looking at it as a solution to, ‘Why are kids doing this at a library?’ — and say, ‘Why are kids doing this in a space where people are?’ Because this is where kids go. ... We do not have some of these teen places for them to go.”
On Tuesday night, the Main Library hosted a panel discussion that consisted of Dayton Public Schools Superintendent David Lawrence, DPS business manager Marvin Jones, Dayton Metro Library Deputy Executive Director Rachel Gut and Dayton police Major Jason Hall.
The panel shared information and answered questions from audience members and the community about what’s happened since the large fight at the Southeast Branch on Sept. 27.
The violent melee, which involved multiple Belmont High School students, resulted in the Southeast Branch shutting down for safety reasons from 2:30 to 5 p.m. on school days for the month of October.
Library officials said the Southeast Branch will restore some of the hours on Nov. 4: The library will still remain closed from 2:30 to 4 p.m. weekdays.
On Dec. 23, the branch will no longer close during the after-school hours.
Superintendent Lawrence said the brawl inside the library that was caught on video was unacceptable.
He said the school district plans to increase its security presence at the Southeast Branch when it reopens, and school staff will try to get Belmont High School students on their buses immediately, right after school.
DPS gives its students Greater Dayton RTA bus passes to get to and from school.
The Southeast Branch and the Main Library in downtown often have large numbers of DPS students visit after they leave school.
Lawrence said subcommittees have been formed to explore some technology-based and security-based solutions to support young people and improve safety.
“This is complex,” he said. “I’m not making any excuses for Dayton Public Schools ... we have a violence issue in this community, writ large.”
Dayton’s elected leaders plan to launch a new violence interruption program after a surge of youth gun crime and violence this year.
DPS officials say the district offers lots of after-school clubs, sports activities, music and band opportunities and other programs.
Jones, the business manager, said the community needs to “diagnose the problem” and figure out what students want to do after school. He said they may want and benefit from paid internships, workforce training or jobs.
“We can create all of these programs, but if the programs don’t meet the needs of the kids that are involved, it’s all for naught,” he said. “I’d like to see students at events like this. I want to hear our students’ voices: What do you want after school?”
District officials said many DPS students have jobs and rely on their RTA bus passes to get to work.
Lawrence also said DPS would be able to transport all of the students in the district on yellow school buses if the district was not also required to transport charter school students.
James said the school district is required to transport all of these students under state law and the district would benefit from some legislative relief or support.
Some community members who attended the forum told this newspaper they think young people need resources and help toward learning and developing conflict resolution skills.
Police Major Hall during the meeting pointed out that Dayton has a very large population of children in group homes.
A Dayton Daily News investigation earlier this year found that Montgomery County (primarily the city of Dayton) contains more than a third of foster care group homes in Ohio, which has put a strain on local resources. Police and other leaders say many of these kids have significant issues that are not being properly addressed.
Winters, the Southeast library regular, said he is still concerned because the panel did not share a lot of specific details about how to “ease the crisis” at the Southeast Branch when it reopens to make sure it’s a safe environment for the community and staff.
“I think the fundamental problem here is that ever since Southeast opened, you guys have been trying to run a library inside of a busy bus terminal,” he told the panel.
He said he thinks the Southeast Branch should make changes to the landscaping, architecture and procedures at the library so it is not used as a “cut-through” to the bus stop.
Gut said Tuesday’s community forum is not supposed to be a “one-and-done.” She said this hopefully will be just the start of an ongoing conversation about how to improve safety at the library facilities.
She said about 99% of the kids who visit the library branches follow the rules, display good behavior and utilize the resources that are offered. The video of the high-profile fight showed only a handful of teens fighting, but dozens of others crowded around watching and filming.
Rachel Ward, vice president of Omega Community Development Corporation, said on Tuesday night that young people are the community’s responsibility and youth must be part of any solution.
“They fight, like young people do; we break it up but we provide more opportunities to start again,” she said. “They are children — we were all once children.”
About the Author
