My school district...

Liz and I have the house to ourselves for about 90 minutes once the kids get on the bus for school, and while there is usually something adding drama to our lives for us to discuss (sometimes like adults, sometimes at the top of our lungs)... lately, and especially today, it was about bomb threats.

Our schools district has had five bomb threats this school year. Five. All have been false threats made by students, and only one student has been "caught" as the culprit. The schools effected have been the middle school and the high school (we have one of each in the district) and since they sit right next to each other, when one is evacuated the students go into the other. This way, our high school kids know when there is excitement at the middle school, and vise versa.

I have no idea what one of these bomb scares cost the district (and, thus, ME) in moneys and time lost... but it is rapidly becoming problematic in nature. The latest effort by the district to address the problem is that, if it happens again (making it six times in one year), they will suspend ALL schools for 10 days while every inch of every building is inspected (including student lockers and desks) and that time will be added to the school calendar year in the summer. We have already had a discussion with our kids about the serious nature of this sort of action... and the very serious effects and consequences such actions would have if it ever came to light that one of them were involved in any way, shape or form... but the question remains as to how best the district should handle this.

When a middle school child takes this sort of action (scrawling the phrase "The Bomb" on a bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker, for example)... who is ultimately responsible? I think the child has a degree of culpability, yes... but can the child be held financially responsible for the cost associated with the act and the results? Should the parents be punished for the acts of a child or teen, when they have no opportunity to directly intervene? I DO think that the parents bear some of this burden, yes. I am a firm believer that the parents are the primary educators of the child, and as such hold the burden of responsibility... but the district has a degree of responsibility, too, don't they?

When the acts of a single or very few students puts the lives and safety of all the rest at risk (which is exactly what is happening here), changing the manner and means by which students conduct themselves within the schools is, in my mind, a perfectly rational and justified approach to ending the problem. If that means that bathrooms and hallways need to be monitored by living, breathing teachers between classes, then so be it. If access to bathrooms and hallways (and any other section or area of the school that such a problem has or could occur in) needs to be restricted to only those required to be there at certain times, then so be it. Surely, the cost to the district in additional time or wages couldn't be any greater following this sort of action than it is now with having to call the local police and sheriffs offices for search dogs once a month.

This same district has, as recently as last year, been in the national "headlines" for a sex scandal involving cell phone photos of students being sent to one another (by students). This case was so badly managed that it cost the county DA and most of the sitting school board their jobs, and it cost the tax payers of the district (including me) well in excess of $100,000 to prosecute and settle. One of many issues to result from this case is that of student's rights to privacy within the district buildings and lands... and I am not entirely happy with the results, I can tell you. One result that directly effects the current "crisis" of bomb threats is that I think the school board is walking on egg shells to make sure this problem doesn't reach the same level of public awareness and scrutiny as the last one did. As a parent and a tax payer, I'm concerned that it is having an adverse effect on the judgment of the board in regards to how to handle the problem now and prevent it in the future.

No two factors are driving the issue into "deeper water" than the local liberal agenda (spearheaded by some of my good friends in the local Democratic Party machine... people I met and got to know very well during my friend's run for County Commissioner) and the teachers union. This is the sort of problem that a very, very few "enlightened" parents and a couple of union lawyers could really take to town in a big way. The district already has issues such as a three-page dress code that is so convoluted and twisted as to be unenforceable in any meaningful or universal manner... even in ONE school building... so what hope is there that a reformed or revamped "code of conduct" could be found to address a very VERY serious bomb-threat problem? Were the policies and expectations that I recall from my days in Catholic school so "draconian" in nature as to be unemployable today? I don't think so, but I'm sure a union lawyer or a "concerned parent" could make the case well enough to keep it off the books.

This is a long rant... so let me end it by saying that I feel the money I pay in taxes, when weighed against the level of education my children are receiving, is worth at least an A- grade. My problem is with the administration and policies of the district, and in that area, the grade falls to a solid D.