I am so confused by so many things which we do today in public schools. The sad part is that many of the misguided things we do hurt the education, and emotional, growth of our students. The worst part of all of the misguided things we do is simply to avoid having parents calling administration and school boards who feel they have better things to do than to simply explain the rules and regulations to the parents, and tell them the decision is final.
For instance, in the past two school years my school system has built a new high school, placed I.D. scanners on doors to all schools, and instituted a dress code which now consist of one rule: cannot show the student’s mid-drift. Each of these issues were put in place to show a strong front in protecting our students or to lower the number of phone calls the school board and administrators have to answer concerning dress code violations. Each of these issues have placed our students and teachers in considerably more danger. I will start with the dress code as it seems to not refer to school and student safety.
The dress code is first and foremost disgusting. I would be offended if I saw an adult wearing the things our students are wearing thanks to this new dress code. (By the way, the students wear tank-tops showing their mid-drifts as well with zero consequences to this point.) Even worse than that is the fact that with the new dress code it is even more difficult to recognize students. Students can now wear hats and hoodies in school. This means when they are walking up and down the halls we as teachers have no idea if it is a student from our school, or an outsider who should not be on our campus. With the number of school shootings occurring in our country our rules and regulations should be getting stricter to make our schools and students safer. We seem to be going in the wrong direction.
The I.D. scanners were placed on all school doors in the county over the past couple of school years. This is an example of a school board going as far as they think they have to so they can pound their chest and scream to the parents how much they have spent on protecting their children. Problem: they do not protect anybody. The I.D.s were only given to teachers and not students. Meaning: between each and every class period our doors automatically open so students can get in and out to move between buildings during class changes. To solve this problem is very simple in several ways. Move all classrooms into one school building, then there is no need for students to need to leave or re-enter the building so the doors do not need to open. Second option would be to give students I.D. tags as well so they can scan in when needed, also alleviating the need for the doors to be completely unlocked for eight minutes between every class period.
The new high school which was build over the past couple of years is no safer than the old school. How is it that we just spent millions of dollars with all of the school shootings taking place, yet make it no safer than the building we were in? The first floor of the new high school has windows in every classroom. It looks nice. It is also stupid as anyone who wants to do harm to our students or staff can simply walk up to the window and do damage without even needing to enter the building. We just built a new school, yet we continue to have classes in another building, meaning about half of our students must leave the main building and walk to the second building with no safety precautions in place to protect them from anything (even the weather, much less someone trying to harm them). As noted earlier, the doors to the main building, and the second building, unlock for eight minutes between each class period, meaning when our students are most vulnerable and the halls are crammed with students anyone has access to our building.
We need to stop putting numbers, appearances, and inconveniences ahead of our students’ safety. Every time we allow our students out of the building without protection, every time our doors unlock between classes, every time we cannot tell who is under the hoodie, we are endangering each and every one of out students. I hope we never have to suffer through a school tragedy, I hope no one ever has to suffer through anything like that again. However, it is absolutely unacceptable that we seem to invite one. If, God forbid, we ever have something tragic happen at one of our schools our school board and administration will be at fault for doing nothing to proactively protect our students and staff.
Public School Truth 