Riverside High 11th in NYS for weapons

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Riverside High School has seen more than its share of weapons confiscated from students. Now a teacher is speaking out after he was assaulted a week ago.

Marc Bruno is a Social Studies teacher and union rep at Riverside. Last week, after he was kicked trying to subdue an angry student who later was found to be carrying a large knife, Bruno did some research on the NYS Education Department website and found that Riverside stood out as having the most weapons found in school for the year 2010-2011 of any Buffalo School, and that ranked as the 11th highest among more than 3,000 schools outside of NYC.

WEB EXTRA | See the data for yourself right here. You can search for any school in WNY by County, District or School

"We have to have the discussion. We cannot pretend there is not a problem," Bruno said. "The administration, the teachers, the security staff are doing everything they can. We may need more security, we might have to possibly look at walking through the metal detectors that students walk through every day."

MORE | Bruno told News 4 in last week's attack, the 16-year-old girl could barely be restrained even though he and another teacher were trying to stop her

But of the 16 weapons found that year at Riverside, school officials point out that five of them were mace, and most of the others were considered pen knives with blades less than two and a half inches long.

Buffalo Schools Associate Superintendent Will Keresztes said, "The facts in the data also show that there was not a single act of misconduct at Riverside in which a weapon was actually used."

Student Support Teams often would learn that the students were carrying the mace and knives more for their own protection walking to and from school.

"I want to be clear, though, that the school district applies very real consequences to students who possess these things, but we won't do it with blinders on and we won't disregard the underlying reasons why are students do this," Keresztes said.

Want to compare WNY schools to other schools outside of our region? Download the raw data from the State Education Department here.