[Vision2020] Security Guards in High School? (was: message from
Roberta Radavich)
Saundra Lund
sslund at adelphia.net
Thu Apr 28 18:08:53 PDT 2005
Hi Donovan and Visionaries:
As long as we're sharing anecdotal experiences, I'll toss out that I
attended two high schools in CA, one with a closed campus my freshman year
and one with an open campus for the next two-and-a-half years until I
graduated early. And, I never had problems purchasing lunch when I was a
lowly freshman and probably in the unpopular "Goody-Two Shoes" group
(because I actually cared about my grades and education -- go figure). I
think, too, you must have gone to a more upscale school than my (elite)
high school during my freshman year because we sure didn't have
refrigerators to use for lunches! Or, maybe I'm just older than you and
perhaps there are fridges available there now -- I don't know. I'm sorry
your experience was different, Donovan, but your experience certainly isn't
universal for all high school freshman attending closed campuses in CA, ID,
or elsewhere. IOW, my experience is just as valid as yours.
However, moving right along to the main reason I'm responding . . .
Donovan Arnold wrote:
"It is my understanding that the law requires security guards at every high
school now."
Last night, a V2020 poster asked you for more information, but I don't see
that you've responded to that request . . . or have I just missed your
response?
I think you must have misunderstood something, so I'm hoping you'll clarify
and we can get to the bottom of this confusion.
Since I'm interested in facts rather than understandings/misunderstandings,
misinformation, or scare tactics, and since I value credibility, I'll share
what I know.
I spoke to a couple of MSD personnel today, and none of them are aware of
any such law. However, perhaps the people I spoke with today just aren't
aware, so if they are incorrect, please provide the statute.
Also, since you mentioned that you'd attended high school in CA and you
weren't clear on where this supposed "law" is, I thought I'd check with the
CA Department of Education as well. According to Michael Hersher, Assistant
General Counsel for the California Department of Education, there's no such
law there, either.
Or, have I completely missed the boat and did you mean to imply there was
some sort of federal statute? I suppose that's possible, but my inclination
is to think Mr. Hersher as well as the MSD folks I talked with would know
about a federal law. However, perhaps my inclination is wrong.
Oh, one last thing: for the record, I've actually seen the flyer and had
seen it before I posted about it yesterday :-)
Anxiously Awaiting Clarification,
Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
Edmund Burke
-----Original Message-----
From: Donovan Arnold [mailto:donovanjarnold2005 at hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 27 April 2005 8:33 PM
To: sslund at adelphia.net; jwillard at turbonet.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] message from Roberta Radavich
"Maybe you didn't dream up the closed campus part, but it certainly seems
that you dreamed up the "guards (armed?)" part. If not, then provide us
with FACTS."--Saundra Lund
I am not defending or knocking down a flyer I have not seen. I hope others
will not either. However, I do know about this part that Saundra is bringing
up and I have attended a high school 9-12 and 10-12. Both closed and open,
in Idaho and California.
It is my understanding that the law requires security guards at every high
school now. So I do not think that part is made up. In terms of looking in
people's cars, yes that happens all the time. As soon as you had one
incident at the school of a freshman sneaking out during lunch with his
junior buddy in the car and a parent found out about it, every car would be
searched. There is no doubt about it because the law would hold the school
accountable if something happened to that 14 year old while in the care of a
15 year old off campus.
If you have a 9-12 high school you are going to have parents that DO NOT
WANT their son or daughter leaving campus in a car with a junior or senior.
And how do you regulate that?
The armed part, I do not know about that. I would be thinking maybe mace, or
a taser gun eventually. I do not think they would have guns. But they have
to have means of protecting students besides saying, "Stop that or I will
say stop that again!".
I hated the closed campus 9-12 system I attended in California. I did not
even get lunch for the first two months of school because of the closed
campus system. The lines were 30 minutes long and lunch was only 35 minutes.
Being a freshmen, we were always pushed to the back of the line. I can only
think of a few times in the first few months of school I could get my lunch
and have time to eat it too. I was not a big guy when I was 14 and size
matters when getting lunch in disorganized lines for getting food. It was
not like Shop KO lines. It was more like a mob that separated into little
lines when it got close to the windows where you ordered.
Yes, I tried to bring a lunch. But after the first day, the California sun
warmed up my sandwich into sometime uneatable as warm mayonnaise boiled and
the pop can was too hot to drink with the metal touching my lips. Oh yes,
they had a refrigerator at the school. But the line to get your sacked lunch
was the same mob line to order the slop they served on a plate.
I was finally able to get lunch only because private venders came on campus,
those metal carts with umbrella to protect them from the sun and shout
visually they where they were, and offered the worst tasting food in the
world. The line was only ten minutes. So I went there, at least the milk was
cold.
Take Care,
Donovan J Arnold
VERY PRO OPEN CAMPUS
>From: "Saundra Lund" <sslund at adelphia.net>
>To: "'Janice Willard'" <jwillard at turbonet.com>, <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>Subject: RE: [Vision2020] message from Roberta Radavich
>Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:25:12 -0700
>
>Oh, good grief!!!
>
>While I agree with much of what Ms. Radavich writes & and I think she's
>made some good points, I've actually seen The Flyer. It was, IMHO,
>despicable and utterly appalling, and I do hope Joan is able to get it
>typed up to post so that folks can judge for themselves.
>
>I can tell you that I attended a high school with a closed campus --
>you lose a few students a year driving to or from the (elite) high
>school on an
>(elite) incredibly dangerous road and it's amazing how quickly folks
>realize that the cost of youthful feelings of immortality shouldn't be
>death driving to/from school for lunch.
>
>Guess what??? There were NO guards, armed or other wise. Period. No
>checking of student IDs or anything else, either. Period.
>
>What there *was* was the rule (closed campus) and . . . here's a novel
>idea:
>consequences for not following the rule.
>
>Now, I don't know what all schools do with respect to closed campus (or
>even that any such local plans would materialize), but after seeing
>that totally reprehensible flyer, I did take the time to call & email
>around to friends I have around the country. The *only* schools (all
>two of them, one in Chicago and one in NYC) I was able to find with
>guards are those with
>*open*
>campuses.
>
>So, how responsible would it have been for me to hang out around the
>high school handing out flyers stating that a new open campus would
>require "guards (armed?)"?!?!? Not very, huh? If I were a betting
>person, I'd put my money on your reaction to me having pulled a stunt
>like that based on *absolutely NO facts* not being at all favorable.
>
>As far out of line as I'd have been to do something like that, at
>*least* it would have been based on something more than allowing
>paranoia to take over my own worst possible spin on a *potential*
>closed campus. Where are your facts? I don't recall any being cited
>with respect to guards & closed campus on that odious piece of work.
>I'm left to assume that because there
>*was* no factual basis -- please correct me if I'm wrong.
>
>Quite frankly, I find it totally IRRESPONSIBLE to toss out completely
>unfounded crap like that, and to *kids*, no less!
>
>That is lower than I'd ever dreamed I'd see local politics sink :-(
>
>Maybe you didn't dream up the closed campus part, but it certainly
>seems that you dreamed up the "guards (armed?)" part. If not, then
>provide us with FACTS.
>
>Furthermore, if you want to get yourselves worked up into a tizzy about
>something, why not pick something real that's already here rather than
>something you apparently dreamed up? For instance, given your autonomy
>& parental authority concerns, why aren't you up in arms out our
>community's junior high school students not being allowed to take backpacks
to class?
>
>
>Saundra Lund
>Moscow, ID
>
>The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to
>do nothing.
>Edmund Burke
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com
>[mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
>On Behalf Of Janice Willard
>Sent: Wednesday, 27 April 2005 1:14 PM
>To: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: [Vision2020] message from Roberta Radavich
>
>Janice, I do not really desire to join v 2020. Could you see through
>to posting this in my behalf?
>
>RE: Closed Campus for high school
>
>Readers, the description so maligned by Rose Huskey (Wednesday, April
>27,
>2005 2:25 AM) of a closed campus is based upon this evidence and these
>thoughts.
>
>School board member Paul Weingartner told me that they most certainly
>would close the campus of the new high school to the lower grades.
>Those of us who have lived through closed campus are aware that you
>actually can't have a closed campus without enforcement. The
>description of the enforcement, however odious, is a description of what
some of us have lived through.
>The
>trail donation required an 8 foot cyclone fence around the proposed
>school property as a condition of the sale. During the final stage of
>the women's league of voters meeting, when parties were encouraged to
>ask further questions of the representatives on both sides, Candis
>Donicht told Dave Peckham that a closed campus was planned for the
>lower three grades. How do you think a closed campus will be enforced,
>if not by checking each car at the gate??
>
> Please note, I didn't just dream this up as an ungrounded scare
>tactic.
>I was told it was in the plans already, at the new site.
>
> We should be looking at real need, and at our various strategies to
>meet that need. The real need, as I see it, is for our children to be
>successful as they move into society, and for them to be safe, and for
>them to develop a healthy sense of personal value. Clearly from this
>bond election, we as a community, have a lot of different strategies
>for how best to meet that set of basic needs. There is a problem with
>using the word
>"need" to describe a strategy. A new school on the "trail site" is only
>one possible strategy to meet a need. I believe we can all be clearer
>in our process, less confrontational, and more understanding, when we
>have clarity on what is a need and what is a strategy. The emotional
>punch that we generate claiming that a strategy is actually a "need",
>clouds our minds, so that we loose the focus of what our basic needs
>are, and we loose the creative process of looking at the full range of
>strategies.
> Our community has so many truly bright and well intentioned
>thinkers on all sides of this issue, and I believe we are once again at
>the place where we should focus on the basic needs of our children and
>our community, all of us, and let voices from all quarters be heard.
>We must come back to the table with whatever levels of compassion we
>can personally muster, and again negotiate strategies.
> There are things that we wisely fear, like we fear water when we
>do not know how to swim. I personally fear the things that make a
>child feel he has no control of his life, not even in the simplest of
>decisions, such as where to eat his lunch, because I feel that our
>children already have so little opportunity to exercise their own
>decision making processes. They are
>told for hours each day, 5 days a week, where to be, what to do. My first
>living child, who at the end of high school got 99.9 on his PSAT, told
>me years later, that it took him 2 years before he could get beyond the
>damages generated by having told what to do for so long. He said, "I
>knew a lot of things that I didn't want, but it took me two years
>before I even began realizing that I could be thinking in terms of what
>I *did* want for my life." I fear this deadening that occurs as we
>remove so many areas of decision making from our children.
> Another linked fear for me, and again I stress that this is just
>me, is that of gradually desensitizing of our US citizens to police
>powers, so that we do not defend on a national level, our rights to the
>freedoms set
>down in the Bill of Rights. It's been so long since most of us read that
>document. Changes have been occurring, escalated recently by fears of
>terrorism, so that now we meekly submit to searches when we get on a
>airplane, to laws that allow people to be held in prison for
>unspecified long periods without being accused of a crime. Each step
>we make that accustoms our children to the idea that they must submit
>to losses of basic freedoms, when that loss is not necessary, seems to
>me a further step toward acceptance of a police state. I want to see
>our children successfully integrated into a free society. I want them
>to know our downtown business owners, to know there are places other
>than Wal-Mart that they can browse through, to become active members of
>the community. Isolating them... how will this accomplish our goal to
>socialize our children?
> I feel that the closed campus idea usurps the authority of a parent.
>If
>a parent wishes his child to take a sack lunch and remain on campus,
>this power should remain with the parent. If a parent wants the child
>to be able to leave campus and head to the nearest eatery of choice in
>our town, I think that parent should be able to direct that freedom for
>their child, based on their own trust of the child and on the family
>needs, without going through an involved and cumbersome permission
>process. If any campus has lovely and inviting seating areas, and
>foods that are desirable, chances are most students will happily stay
>put and visit with each other. There are many ways to meet the lunch
>time need for fueling the body, however. It is my opinion that those
>that choose not to remain on campus should be free to take a walk, or a
>drive with a friend, and feel the same level of personal freedom that
>other free adults in our community enjoy. This would be my preferred
>strategy to additionally meet the need for our children, at some level,
>to have autonomy, to retain the sense that they could make decisions
>as adults do, wise or foolish, and to learn from them. In my opinion,
>it is not always wise to protect a child from every possible form of
>harm, or else, how can he even learn to walk?
> Roberta Radavich
>
>
>
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