Following three deadly shootings at Mainland schools over the past two weeks, local educators say violence in the schools have long been a concern but maintain that Hawai'i's schoolchildren generally are safe.

"When you put it all into perspective, (Hawai'i) schools are still very safe places for kids to be," said Meda Chesney-Lind, a University of Hawai'i-Manoa women's studies professor who has researched the issue of safety in Hawai'i schools.

O'ahu educators and students interviewed yesterday said violence in the Islands' public schools appears to be limited to isolated incidents and should not be considered a widespread problem.

"Most often I feel safe. There really hasn't been a time that I haven't felt safe," said Kelli Iwane, a sophomore at Kailua High School. She said when fights break out on campus, they tend to be spurred by minor disputes and misunderstandings.

Iwane's friend Jason Lum, a senior at Kailua High, said school security does a good job of watching for violent conflicts and students know there are harsh consequences to getting into fights.

Nonetheless, public high schools here have experienced problems, with several incidents in the past 19 months involving students from Campbell, Nanakuli, Kapolei, Farrington, Radford, Wai'anae and Waipahu high schools. The fights led to various school disciplinary actions, dozens of arrests and heightened educator and police attention to school safety matters.

The problems led at least one principal to suggest banning violent students permanently from campus and sending them to an alternative learning facility.

Recent school shootings in Wisconsin, Colorado and Pennsylvania brought the issue of school violence to the forefront nationally. President George W. Bush yesterday urged the nation during a daylong conference with parents, students and educators to help prevent such tragedies.

Bush also told the gathering of educators, activists and law enforcement officials that more federal funding and government regulation won't solve the problem.

Greg Knudsen, state Department of Education spokesman, said many of the violent activities that occurred here in recent months are isolated incidents.

"There isn't a problem. ... It is pretty much nonexistent when you consider how many tens of hundreds of thousands of kids that are all clustered together on campuses," Knudsen said.

Statistics on fights and other problems, however, are difficult to obtain. The DOE does not keep centralized data on the number of serious school fights, although each school does report its own data. The only centralized tally involves the number of firearms brought on campus.

WEAPONS USED IN FIGHT

The most recent reported incident took place yesterday when police were called to a fight at Wai'anae High School.

Police said a faculty member, 36, was assaulted while trying to break up a scuffle about 9:30 a.m. No injuries were reported. Police arrested two 18-year-old men and a 35-year-old man. It was not known if the teenagers are students at the school.

Weapons were involved Sept. 27 when two fights broke out at a bus stop in front of Farrington High School's auditorium.

One involved two 19-year-olds, neither of whom were students, who had planned to meet and fight over a girl, school officials have said. One man received scrapes and scratches from a knife and went to a hospital.

The other fight, which involved two friends of the first two young men, occurred shortly after the first, school officials have said. One of the two 16-year-old Farrington High juniors involved in the second clash lost an eye after he was shot in the face with a BB gun.

Farrington High principal Catherine Payne said last month that she was concerned about a resurgence of gang violence.

Chesney-Lind, the UH researcher, said the fact that the Farrington principal is talking about the possibility of an increase in gang activity is yet another indication that more attention needs to be given to violence prevention. "The problem is that we have no good way of counting the gang problem," Chesney-Lind said.

GANG ACTIVITY?

The Honolulu Police Department also does not keep track of violent incidents in which police are dispatched to public schools.

Michelle Yu, HPD spokeswoman, said there are various programs in its Youth Services Division that attempt to prevent gang activity, drug use and truancy. Officers in the Gang Resistance Education and Training program have reported a "significant decrease" in the amount of gang activity since the program began in 1999, Yu said.

Mililani principal John Brummel said his school is a safe place, but the recent Mainland shootings make him more concerned about the issue of violence.

"Because of the attention these acts bring, school people, like myself, have concerns about the copycat issue," he said. "We do have fewer incidents than most high schools as far as fights and violence and those types of things. Most of the kids here are here for an education and that helps a lot."

State Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, co-founder of the state legislature's Keiki Caucus, warned against letting a sense of school safety give way to complacency.

"If you compare it to the Mainland, yes it is safe, but we shouldn't lower our guard," she said.

Reach Loren Moreno at lmoreno@honoluluadvertiser.com.