NOTE: Over the course of three weeks, I reported from outside this pre-school in one of the most dangerous sections of the city during both morning and afternoon dismissals. The article prompted a series of changes, as is detailed in the follow-up story.

CAMDEN -- Just like the 3-year-old boys with their Spider-Man backpacks and the 4-year-old girls with their perfectly placed hair braids, the "drug boys" and prostitutes wake up early for school.

They mill around Red Circle Liquors down the block, which isn't even open yet. They drop enough blue heroin baggies to get caught on teachers' shoes, and they leave enough broken beer bottles in the makeshift employee parking lot to bring a crunch to every step.

Each day, they are among the first adults seen by Camden's most vulnerable residents -- 3- and 4-year-olds, most with special needs, who attend the Early Childhood Development Center at the old Dudley School in one of East Camden's roughest neighborhoods.

Now, after a reported shootout Oct. 4 that sent students in the schoolyard scurrying inside for safety, parents are threatening to pull their children out of school while police are stepping up patrols to calm fears.

"If my son is not secure, I'm not going to send my kid to school," said Wineska Melecio, the mother of a 3-year-old. "They can send me to court, whatever they want. But I won't send him to school. End of story."

The 103-year-old Thomas H. Dudley School served elementary school students until this year, when those students moved to the new Catto School and the school district relocated the Early Childhood Development Center from two rented spaces in downtown Camden and Mount Ephraim.

The 150 mostly pre-kindergarten students at ECDC, including some who are handicapped or have disabilities like autism, attend school one block from the Federal Street business corridor, which police describe as an active drug marketplace with as many as 60 drug operations and 25 robberies or assaults monthly.

Recent calls to the school district, police department and state state Department of Education by parents, staff and the Courier-Post, however, seem to have prompted a crackdown.

In a narcotics sweep Tuesday of a three-block radius around the school, police arrested three suspected dealers with a total of 25 bags of crack, 14 bags of heroin and 18 bags of marijuana.

Since the alleged shootout, the school district has banned the school's outdoor gym classes for now, and parents now must drop off and pick up their children inside the building. Tonight, a staff meeting is scheduled to go over safety precautions, teachers said.

And police say there are now increased patrols of the school area to "make sure no one is hanging out at the school and if so, moving them along," said Lt. Anthony Carmichael, who oversees the police department's school patrol. "If we continue to see the problem and the periodic checks don't work we will have a cruiser parked outside during dismissal."

More police attention is exactly what Judy Varallo wants.

"If you're going to do your crime, fine, but not on this block," said Varallo, an ECDC special education teacher with 34 years in the district.

 On Oct. 4, she said, students and teachers heard four gunshots at about 1:45 p.m. A gym class was outside, prompting the teachers to shuffle the children downstairs into a basement.

Following the shooting, Varallo said the school was not locked down and there wasn't a police presence an hour later when classes were dismissed. She said teachers weren't told what was going on.

Parents say they weren't notified, either. "I'm very highly upset that they didn't let us know," said Melecio, who still doesn't know if her son was outside at the time.

Police said they responded to reports of a shooting, but they didn't make any arrests and couldn't confirm what happened. No injuries were reported, but neighbors, who refused to give their names for fear of retribution, said a man was shot in the arm on High Street, down the block from the school.

Carmichael said he wasn't aware of the shooting when it was reported and so school patrol officers were not sent to the school.

Bart Leff, district spokesman, said even though the shooting was unconfirmed, the doors of the school were, in fact, locked and parents were told that "there was something happening in the neighborhood." He said these are "code yellow" procedures, and they were in effect.

Varallo said a code yellow was not announced.

"We've talked to the parents about the problems in the neighborhood, we've asked them to be careful and keep an eye out," Leff said.

Staff members tell of vandalized cars and fights between people they believe are dealers and junkies, hookers and pimps. There are stray cats, menacing pit bulls and open sexual activity.

"It's just so blatant," Varallo said. But most teachers are afraid to talk, she said. Once, she stopped a man from urinating on the school building; later, her car had nails in the tires.

This week there was a shoeless man falling asleep against the building next door. Visibly intoxicated people walked past the school in the late morning.

Parent Temika Hatcher said she was dropping off her child at 8:30 a.m. one day last week as two women "beat on each other" in front of the school, screaming: " "Gimme my drugs! Gimme my drugs!' "

Parent Lisa Huntley sees what she believes are prostitutes sleeping on the ground in the car wash across from the liquor store, and she said she wouldn't attend a parent-teacher conference because it was held at 6 p.m., at nightfall.

"I know it's everywhere in Camden, the drugs and the violence, but they put those kids right there in the spot," she said. "God forbid those drug wars were a little closer, and they shot somebody's baby."

At least two school security guards are stationed outside the building. Along with teachers, they hold the children's hands as they walk in and out of school, and most parents praised the staff for caring for their children.

"You have to sign them in, you have to sign them out," parent Priscilla Torrez said. "They're really, really good here."

A new $24.5 million ECDC in the Parkside section was expected to be completed last year, but it was delayed because of environmental problems. It is now scheduled to open next fall.

In the meantime, ECDC is where it is, across from a long loading dock that leads to a boarded-up factory. The dock is a hang-out for drug users, neighbors and police said, filled with blue baggies, broken lighters, busted beer bottles and the stench of urine. But it is also used by teachers to park and parents to pick up their children.

"The children are younger now and that means that the parents have to bring them to school and they're seeing what's going on," said Pastor Kenneth Thorpe of the Cavalry Bible Tabernacle Church, which is next door to the loading dock.

For some, the church is the only bright spot.

"I just look at the church and say (prayers)," Varallo said. "I call on the archangels to protect everyone in the school and the city."

This article appeared in the Courier-Post. Photographs by Avi Steinhardt, Courier-Post.