Not immune from the violence that has plagued schools and communities nationwide in recent years, North Little Rock educators, custodians and bus drivers got a lesson Monday on just how real it could get here.

"The thing that happened in Jonesboro could happen here tomorrow," former Pulaski County coroner turned youth gang expert Steve Nawojczyk told them flatly.

Add to that what Gov. Mike Huckabee had to say to the group of more than 1,000 North Little Rock School District employees who assembled at the East Campus for a training forum on school safety.

"The miracle is that we haven't had a lot more of them," the governor said of the Jonesboro shootings.

Nawojczyk and Huckabee, along with two other youth violence specialists, spoke during a four-hour program organized by Traffic Judge Barry Sims that focused on preventing violence, resolving conflicts and recognizing gang activity.

The common theme among the morning's speakers was that no quick or easy solutions are out there to stop tragedies like the March shooting that left four Jonesboro students and one teacher dead.

And that's primarily because the problems in schools reflect those in society.

"We look for the wrong reasons and are too quick to find the wrong solutions," Huckabee said.

But awareness of signs that point to trouble followed by quick intervention can go a long way, the experts said.

"Be alert, informed, and proactive," stressed Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services.

Uniforms are suggested

Several subjects addressed by the specialists during the program struck chords with the teachers, who responded with impromptu applause.

One was the idea of school uniforms for all students.

Trump said uniforms ease some of the constant competition for status, prevent students from wearing items that serve as "gang identifiers,' reduce student robberies en route to and from school and make it easier to monitor trespassers on school grounds.

"These are simple, practical things. It's not rocket science," Trump said of the uniform plan.

A video advocating uniforms wowed the audience with a demonstration by a police officer in street clothes who pulled out more than 30 weapons, including all sizes of guns and knives-from inside what looked like a typical t-shirt and jeans.

Though guns get the majority of attention, Trump said that weapons with blades, especially easily hidden box-cutters, small knives, and razor blades, which students are concealing under their tongues and in lip stick containers, are the most prevalent threats to school safety.

But because of access to the internet, homemade bombs are on the increase, Trump said, citing cases in Las Vegas, where an eighth-grader found a recipe for napalm, and in Bridgeport, Conn., where a student built a bomb in shop class without the teacher's knowledge.

Other practical solutions Trump suggested included installing a telephone in every classroom so that teachers won't have difficulty finding one in an emergency; doing background checks on all school employees, including teachers; eliminating student use of pay phones and pagers, two primary tools of drug traffickers; getting rid of portable classrooms, which are easy targets for thieves and vandals; using a camcorder to videotape suspicious activities or fights-an "instant deterrent" for criminals-and maintaining restrooms so they are a safe place without anywhere to hide weapons or drugs.

Ronald Stephens, director of the National School Safety Program at Pepperdine University in California, said he tells school boards across the country to meet in school bathrooms to see some of the conditions first-hand.

That drew thunderous applause from the crowd.

Nawojczyk of Levy recommended more after-school activities, community-oriented policing, teams of parents as support groups, in-school mentoring and tutoring classes, and one-on-one attention like the program in Garland County where 15 teachers each select five at-risk students to contact everyday.

"When you look in the mirror…you're looking at the solution," he said.

Nawojczyk also said a good neighborhood watch program is essential because many youths have parents who don't know how to be parents, so the children seek out a substitute family, often a gang.

"Whether you side politically on the left or on the right, it does take a whole village to raise a child," he said, drawing more audience cheers.

Schools can't do it all

Stephens said physical assaults and incidents of weapons in schools have take a "meteoric jump" in grades sever, eight, and nine, an age group where youth problems have now overtaken high school grades.

He said he favors "educational passports" for students that would give teachers an instant history of the youth's past troubles. He also supports drug testing for students who have been suspended or expelled, and an aggressive search and seizure policy in school parking lots and student lockers. And not entirely out of the realm of possibilities, he added, should be providing students with two sets of textbooks to eliminate the need for lockers.

At Thomas Jefferson High School in New York City, Stephens said, 40 police officers search students for two hours each morning before the classroom day begins.

But there are things teacher and administrators can do, he added. The district should maintain outdoor recreation equipment such as basketball goals better, he said. And teacher should be on the look out for outdoor or indoor graffiti, a sure sign of gang activity, and graffiti crossed out, a sure sign of multiple gang activity.

'And if you don't know what the graffiti means, ask your students," he said.

But troublesome, too, Trump said, is how often in his consulting work with school districts across the country he has found "gross underreporting" of crimes. He said principals and administrators are quick to downplay problems, especially in suburbia, to protect the school image.

He is also surprised at the number of school officials who have a hard time admitting they have gang and drug problems.

Remember, he told administrators, Al Capone once said, "There are no gangsters in Chicago."

Nawojczyk said suburban and small town schools are just as likely to have gang activity as inner-city schools because white youths want to mimic gang life. In fact, he is now working as a consultant on a movie about imitators called "White Boys."

"And we've got a town full of them," he said

But Nawojczyk also said music and movies affect youth behavior when a parent is not around "to keep the screws in tight," an idea Huckabee shared.

He said schools shouldn't be blamed for the culture's problems and stressed that the responsibility of raising children shouldn't be shouldered entirely by teachers.

"Avoid making schools the whipping boy for everything that goes wrong," he said.

The cure for youth violence, he said, was for "moms and dads to start acting like moms and dads," and until then any quick-fix is like "putting band-aids on a broken leg."