By Malik Russell

Richmond School Board member Shonda Harris-Muhammed is calling on her colleagues and Superintendent Dana T. Bedden to stem a tide of alleged violence and assaults at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in the East End.

In a recent Free Press interview, Ms. Harris-Muhammed, who represents the 6th District where the school is located, said more than 10 teachers and staff members from the school contact her regularly about their fears for their safety and that of others.

An email she received from teachers at the school included photos and a video of incidents that she shared with members of the School Board and Dr. Bedden in early May.

“What I have seen places our staff and students in extreme danger,” she said in her email accompanying the information to her colleagues and Dr. Bedden. “Male students are dragging female students down the hallway by their hair, hitting them in the chest, punching them in the rear end and nothing is being done. The students are sent back to their classrooms.”

In emotional remarks during the board’s May 16 meeting, Ms. Harris-Muhammed detailed her understanding of the problems at the school that she said were serious and pervasive enough to warrant public discussion.

“I respect everybody on this board. I love you dearly, but when a teacher gets pushed so hard that her head hits the back of a door and she falls, Houston, we have a problem,” Ms. Harris-Muhammed told her colleagues.

Her goal, she later told the Free Press, is to “rally some additional resources, make changes and get help … to combat the violence and disruptions in the building. We had 12 teachers out on May 20. No plan was in place to service those students with instruction.”

On Tuesday, Ms. Harris-Muhammed led a walk-through at the school. No board members accompanied her.

She said she plans to work with community leaders, police, the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority and the School Board to hold a town hall meeting on violence at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.

Data from the Richmond Police Department confirms problems at the school. According to police records, 82 calls for service at the school were received between mid-November and May 11. Authorities said 18 of those calls happened between school hours. They also logged 14 arrests at 1000 Mosby St., the school’s address, between Sept. 1 and May 16. The arrests took place between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., according to the records.

When contacted by the Free Press, Principal Derrick Scarborough declined to comment. However, school officials released a statement:

“Richmond Public Schools takes any and all reports of safety violations very seriously. District administration has taken extra steps to increase the number of building administration, teachers and security presence to provide support at the school.”

School officials pointed out that while regulations require only one administrator for a building of around 650 students, Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School has four. The school also has nine security workers, according to officials.

School officials also said that more than 200 students at the school are “involved with cases” including “conflict, bullying, gangs and mediation” handled by the RPS’ Office of Family and Community Engagement. The office, created at the start of the 2014-15 school year, is to provide additional support and training for school employees in addition to conflict resolution and violence prevention programs.

For Ms. Harris-Muhammed, the alleged and documented violence is symbolic of the culture of violence that plagues communities across the nation, particular in areas with high concentrations of poverty. She said many of the issues stem from problems within the community that bleed over into the middle school.

She said the school’s student population is made up in part by youngsters from five public housing communities. “No other middle school in this city is fed by five public housing communities,” she said. The school ends up “taking on all of the stuff that happens in the communities where those children reside.”

She wants to mobilize parents from Mosby and other communities to participate more in the school’s PTA and to help create strategies to improve conditions at the school next year.

Art Burton, a longtime community activist and founder of Kinfolks Community, an organization providing resources to residents of Mosby Court, said schools are reflections of communities and the solutions must start there.

“You have to recognize that the issue of violence comes into the schools, and you have to address where it is coming from, which is out of these communities,” Mr. Burton said.

“Many of these communities have been intentionally denied programs, some of them for 30 to 40 years now. We’ve taken out recreation, taken out public works, minimized social services. We have to put those programs back and add reading programs for the kids and sports. We have to change the environment for kids in the community.”