MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A day after video was broadcast by Local 10 News showing a brawl after school in a neighborhood near Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School, students said at least one more fight has happened on campus.
"There was just a fight like two seconds ago, like right now in school," student Megan Auerback said Friday. "And eighth-graders are here visiting the school, like to come to Krop. So it doesn't really help out."
Auerbach's grandmother said violence among students seems to be escalating since she was in school.
"When I went to school many, many years ago, if you were caught in a fight the teacher broke it up and you were expelled or suspended. It doesn’t seem to be working nowadays," Brenda Auerbach said.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokeswoman Daisy Gonzalez-Diego told Local 10 News reporter Sanela Sabovic that school employees can't control what happens off campus.
Gonzalez-Diego said the fight happened Wednesday in the Ives Estates area on Northeast 211th Street, between 13th Place and 14th Avenue.
Video sent to Local 10 News shows a group of teens, one of whom was wearing a Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School shirt, kicking and punching a boy before the group moved to a second victim, who was on the ground near a yellow car.
Gonzalez-Diego said every Miami-Dade County public school teaches its students core values, and that it's up to the parents to implement the same values at home.
A witness called 911, but the teens were gone when police arrived.
"Although not on school grounds, the recorded fight is disturbing, unacceptable and not reflective of the behavior exemplified by the vast majority of our students," Gonzalez Diego said in a statement. "Miami-Dade County Public Schools has the highest expectation of student behavior at all times. Although no criminal charges were pressed against any of the participants in this off-school incident, the school reserves the right to assign consequences to those responsible. As such, the students involved in the altercation have been disciplined according to the Code of Student Conduct."
The school dealt with another problem Friday after students started a small fire inside a boys bathroom, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue officials said.
Authorities said a section of the building was briefly evacuated as a precaution as the building was ventilated.