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ANNAPOLIS — A bill to require the state school board and local boards in Maryland to develop a policy to address gang activity has widespread support among school officials and parents.

The House Ways and Means Committee heard testimony Wednesday on the legislation, proposed by House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Dist. 30) of Annapolis.

The bill also could prohibit students arrested for rape from returning to their schools.

"The most important thing we have is our children," Busch told the House committee. "All agencies believe we can do a better job within our schools to prevent gang activity."

The bill, said Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy, is about making the state's schools safer places to learn.

"It's not about locking kids up," he said. "It's about identification" and getting children into programs to steer them away from gang activity, he said.

Tony Hausner, a member of the Safe Silver Spring community group, wrote to the committee about the case of Tai Lam, who was shot and killed by an alleged MS-13 gang member on a Ride On bus in Silver Spring.

"We are very concerned with the role that gangs are playing in our high schools and middle schools," Hausner wrote. "There is much more that needs to be done to address the problems of gangs and violence in the schools, but this legislation is a very important step in addressing these problems."

The state's 24 superintendents support the bill, said Carl D. Roberts, executive director of the Public School Superintendents' Association of Maryland.

"The rise in gang activity and the negative impact it has on a school must be acknowledged and eliminated," Roberts wrote to the committee.

The bill also requires county school superintendents and county principals to consider denying students who are arrested on rape charges from attending the same school or riding the same school bus as the alleged victim.

In October, The Gazette reported two of three boys charged with the rape of a 15-year-old Gaithersburg girl were allowed to return to Col. Zadok Magruder High School in Rockville.

The boys left the school after their arrest in February 2009 and were charged as adults.

Not everyone supports Busch's bill, however.

The proposed legislation, according to the state's Office of the Public Defender, would require certain students' confidential information to be disclosed to too many people, and there would be "no safeguards" to protect students from being stigmatized.

School boards should not develop policies to address gangs without the help of the Public Defender's Office, child advocacy groups or a gang intervention specialist, according to the Public Defender's Office.