Crime dips 77% at Belmont High School

The school was the top spot for violent crime in Dayton for 10 years.

Belmont High School seniors Tiarra Brown (left) and Melissa Heppes say the learning environment at the school has improved since David White became principal.

Chris Stewart/Staff Belmont High School seniors Tiarra Brown (left) and Melissa Heppes say the learning environment at the school has improved since David White became principal.

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In his three years as principal of Belmont High School, David White has worked to make it a safer place so the focus can shift to improving academic performance.

Chris Stewart/Staff In his three years as principal of Belmont High School, David White has worked to make it a safer place so the focus can shift to improving academic performance. "I'm old school. Structure and order have to come first," he said.

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By Doug Page and Margo Rutledge Kissell, Staff Writers Updated 11:46 PM Saturday, August 27, 2011

DAYTON — From 2001 through 2010, the No. 1 address for violent crimes in the city of Dayton wasn’t a downtown bar, a gentleman’s club or a known drug house.

It was Belmont High School, which had 244 recorded incidents of assaults, menacing, unarmed robberies, rape and aggravated assaults during the decade, according to an analysis of crime data by the Dayton Daily News.

Students and staff took to calling the storied high school “Hell-mont.”

During the 2008-2009 school year alone, police were called to the school Ave. 184 times — that’s once a day — resulting in 62 arrests. Many of the calls required multiple officers.

“Those calls took up a huge amount of our time,” 2nd District Dayton police Lt. Chris Williams said.

Too often, students were victims.

It was so bad, senior Melissa Heppes, 17, remembers having trouble getting through the hallways. “There were so many fights and riots,” she said.

There were, however, plenty of open seats in the classrooms, according to senior Tiarra Brown. Students were “constantly skipping,” she said. “No one was in class.”

Today Belmont, the district’s second largest high school with about 844 students, is a changed place. Much of the violence, fear and intimidation is gone and academic achievement is up.

“It’s a totally different environment,” said Darlene Powell, head of Probation Services for Montgomery County Juvenile Court.

A get-tough policy by the court, Dayton police and Dayton Public Schools seems to be paying off. Crime within 1,000 feet of the school dropped by 77 percent in the 2009-10 school year. Although it ticked up some last year, it was still well below any of the previous four school years.

At the same time, grade promotions and test scores have improved.

“It took all of us to do this,” Principal David White said last week as he patrolled the hallways, walkie-talkie in hand as he communicated with his administrative team of Theron Spence,  John Seebock and Ken Kraemer. Administrators and assistant principals are visible on each of the school’s three stories throughout the day.

“Come on, let’s go, you’re on the clock,” barks White, 42, loudly counting down the final seconds until the bell rings. A former football coach who still wears a whistle around his neck, White has been known to pull out a bullhorn when he wants to get his message across.

“I’m old school,” he said. “Structure and order has to come first.”

Although he is no-nonsense, White has a rapport with the students, calling many of them by name.

“You do this all day, you get to know all of them,” he said.

After peeking his head into a chemistry class, he spots a familiar student and says, “Ah, you made it.”

Next up: Boosting academic scores

The school kept its “Academic Watch” rating on the latest state report card — the second-lowest of six grades — but saw a 3.5-point bump on its performance index score, which measures the achievement of every student tested. The school’s 73.7 performance index, however, was among the lowest in the Dayton region; not a single state standard was met.

White, now in his third year as principal, said he and his staff are focused on building a structure aimed at increasing student performance. The Belmont Plan, as its known, includes setting performance goals, monitoring progress and aligning curriculum to new state standards.

“You start putting these blocks in that build a school. What you would see in a normal building that hasn’t been through what this one has, those blocks are kind of already done; they just keep tweaking them,” White said. “But for us, it was so broke there was nothing, so it’s almost like starting all the way from scratch.”

He has set ambitious goals for the school, which he believes is capable of earning an “Excellent” rating on its report card within seven years. The would put Belmont in with high-performing high schools like Fairmont, Lebanon and Bellbrook.

Currently, Valerie PreK-8 School is the only Dayton public school with an “Excellent” rating.

White said part of the challenge at Belmont is not only changing the behavior of students, but changing their mind-set. Belmont draws from a diverse student population that is 85 percent economically disadvantaged.

“It’s a behavior change,” White said. “You take a kid who has no inkling of going to college and go, ‘OK, I need you to take the ACT.’ ”

In 2008-09, eight Belmont students took the ACT, one of the two main college entrance exams. Last year, 55 juniors took the test.

White, who previously served as principal of a district-sponsored charter school for at-risk students, admits he turned down the Belmont job three times. He finally agreed, but only if he could bring his administrative team with him.

He doesn’t regret the change of heart. “I like it here,” he said. “I like the trenches.”

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