Integrating much better' at school
WESTFALL - With a student body of about 2,000 students from the fastest growing county in Pennsylvania, Delaware Valley schools have seen a large influx of minority students over the past decade. “I see DV being, in the best sense of the word, a melting pot,” said Tom Burns, teacher at Delaware Valley High School. Burns teaches a class called “Peace Studies” at the school, where race and gender issues is the first topic taught to some 200 of the seniors enrolled in the elective. “As time goes on, people are integrating much better,” he said. When he began teaching at the school 18 years ago, leaving his job in New York City, he sensed hesitancy in the local community in accepting people from other places, which he said “transcended any indication of racism.” “I felt there was a real resistance to having people other than Pike County residents to be involved in the community I lived in.” But such is not the case anymore, he said. “It became easier for people to move here, people were much more open-minded.” Presently, he sees no “overt racial issues in the school” - an observation corroborated by 11/12 grades assistant principal Christopher Pietraszewski . Pietraszewski, who taught at two different schools in the past, including one in the inner-city in Detroit, told the Courier that the few race issues he encounters in his position involves students of all types use of derogatory language. He said it all amounts to nothing more than he would expect, and he considers Delaware Valley still to be a very homogenous school. “Very few of these issues have resulted in discipline, not because the administration takes a lax point of view, but because there is other ways to solve it,” he said. “My impression is that 99% of the few incidents are solved with peer mediation or a guidance counselor without any residual grudge being held.” The school also has a bully busters program. Taking his daily walk through the lunchrooms, Pietraszewski observes students of all the races interacting and sitting together. Jay Tucker, head of the guidance department at Delaware Valley, said that he encounters very few race issues. When there are issues, he said, “It presents itself as a problem with something else, and then the people in the conflict bring the race issue in.” At Delaware Valley, in a relative sense, racism is much less of a concern than surrounding schools. The faculty has been briefed several times on related issues and is taught to keep vigilant. “Across America there is always an amount of prejudice one would be naïve to think that this problem has been totally eradicated in our country,” said Burns. “If you say there is no problem, someone will see that as a challenge,” he concluded.