Arrested for what? Being black while outside the cafeteria?
Everyone in the Lowcountry is breathing a collective sigh of relief that during Wednesday's fight at North Charleston High School no one used a knife or gun. The 26 arrests made by the police and the school-wide lock down were enough to quell the brawl. See Police Boost Presence at School in Friday's P&C.
Now, according to NCHS Principal Juanita Middleton, very few of the 26 will be expelled because "most of those arrested didn't actually fight."
Huh?
Please explain why they were arrested. Someone.
Friday, September 04, 2009
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17 comments:
Give me a break! If Middleton's statement is true then she should be fired for wasting taxpayers money and calling police when they were not needed. She just showed the public she is not able to handle the school. Check the records on those arrested...most have had issues in the past and several spent time at the alternative school in previous years.
Not arresting everybody and immediately recommending expulsion guarantees but one thing: This will happen again...and again...and again...
Lots of experts in the crowd.....go run the school if its so easy....maybe Ricky Ricardo could get it done.....or maybe you Babbie, you seem to know absolutely everything about our schools. You bench warmers make me sick, do something constructive if you are so damn intelligent. I know, I know, you will have some "wisdom" to throw back, but what good will it do for the kids? You do care about the kids don't you? Why of course you do....
Anonymous 3:33--you have nothing to add to anyone's discussion but ad hominem attacks. Pitiful.
Well gee, I'm sorry....I thought attacking people and their body of work was the basis of this site.....check the mirror out.
To assume the contributors to this discussion are bench warmers is to ignore the real work that some of them are doing. Some teach, some are neighborhood activists and some serve on school boards (including charter, constituent and county boards). Some even raise kids...their own and the ones their kids will bring home.
The 'critics' here are most often people who know the system all too well and are simply frustrated with how so much of it continues to fail so many. It would appear those who would bash them have either no direct knowledge themselves or a vested interest in keeping things just as they are.
I find it annoying that so many apologists for CCSD, I'll call them the 'critics of the critics', continue to publish broad and erroneous assumptions about others with whom they disagree. Even when the facts are laid before them, they stick with their prejudices, no matter how wrong or outdated their mischaracterizations are.
Here are just a few factual corrections that will continue to be ignored by those who believe our public schools are above reproach and the current leadership could be no better.
Very few if any of those who continue to point out the serious flaws in the Buist admissions process have ever sought to have their kids admitted to that magnet school. So it's not sour grapes at all. (How pompous!)
Charter high schools have actually shown CCSD how to improve the learning environment of the so-called regular high school in the district. Just ask high school students what they think of the later starting times.
Parents and teachers have raised questions in private about short changing kids at NCHS and Burke when it comes to qualified teachers, bogus course offerings and how CCSD has played the dumping of students while administrators manipulate school report cards. Fortunately the teachers and parents blew their whistles cautiously have supporters in the community who will speak out with out the fear of retaliation from the superintendent or the county board chairman.
It was constituent board members, downtown parents and teachers who raised the issue that too many high school students couldn't read. They did this at least 5 years before the newspaper spilled the beans or our superintendent 'got religion'. Now they want us to believe they are doing something about it. It's about time for some and way too late for far too many. No kudos to an administration or community leadrs who were too slow to respond until they were forced to address the problem.
More often than not, it's been parents who have identified building inadequacies before problems appear like the ones at NCHS on the Brentwood campus (it was once an elementary school, after all). Too often officials play down parents' questions by asserting their own expertise which fall away like smoke and mirrors when the problems become real. Still the superintendent will explain away official responsibility by blaming 'unforseen conflicts' on socio-economic or even geographic issues.
Before we set the bar by only allowing 'happy talk' let's consider who will be paying the price for our ignorance. There is a price and it will be levied against us and our children. It is a price we are already paying and it will only become more of a burden in the future if we continue to ignore these issues.
Before any of us bow to those who would shoot the critic, consider this quote used by another community's website.
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
Frederick Douglass
Well said. Thank you.
So well said... I submit to your remarks!
The irony is so rich and thick we could pour it on bread for some breakfast. Apparently if someone smacks the "bully" Babbie in the mouth they agree with all that goes on at CCSD...smooth approach. The other rather ironical thing is apparently Babbie has henchmen to do her fighting too....not original around here....
I find your subtitle to be in poor taste, Babbie.
Beyond that, you are all mis-informed, much like the inept Diette Courege who continues to write stories about which she has done little or shoddy research.
You do not understand the student body of NCHS, the community, nor the laws governing arrests, suspensions and special education. As a quasi-outsider, I do not purport to know all, either.
Stick to soapbox-ing for charter schools, or start advocating for and applauding the administrators, teachers and other adults who make miracles happen every day at schools like NCHS.
From the safety of charters, and the bloggosphere, it is easy for us to speak indignantly, isn't it?
This one's gettin hot Babbie, you Colwell, and Adams need a new story to enlighten us.....please.
What I asked was why the students were arrested if they weren't fighting. Seems to me like a reasonable question for a taxpayer to ask. So far, no one has answered it.
If any of the students arrested were special education students, determine the degree of their involvement, conduct a manifestation meeting, if warranted, and if there is no contributing relationship with the disability, move for an expulsion hearing. Let a hearing panel decide on every single one of these students who can be recommended for expulsion, special education or not. Clearly many parents are frightened to send their children back to NCHS. Students are scared, if you believe the official NCPD police report. Teachers (many of them new) are scared. Either you advocate for the few or you protect the majority. This isn't rocket science. If you do not take a stand now, the fights will continue, intimidation of teachers will increase, teachers will leave, and the violence will not subsist until a general "zero tolerance" policy against this kind of behavior is taken. Ask the parents. Ask the students. Ask the teachers. Then, and only then, after you have gained a consensus from those groups, do you "ask" CCSD. This is a very serious siutation which has not abated. The district is in denial.
Students were arrested for inciting violence and for disturbing school. They were not fighting. Hmm... that seemed pretty easy wasn't it.
Just because a student was not fighting does not mean they were not breaking the law. Even from the outside, I can deduce that.
The Special Education students will NOT be expelled. If they have ED, EMD or ODD designations, it IS considered part of their disability. From what I have learned from a district person, three main instigating students were just that.
When I was at NCHS a handful or so years ago, getting Sped students expelled was impossible; even when they were removed from school they were given home-bound instruction. Federal law, you know.
I am sure none of this would have happened with Clark Colwell at the helm however.
No problem, really. Quite sure that "High Schools That Work" will fix this.
FYI:
§ 16-17-420. Disturbing schools.
It shall be unlawful:
(1) For any person wilfully or unnecessarily (a) to interfere with or to disturb in any way or in any place the students or teachers of any school or college in this State, (b) to loiter about such school or college premises or (c) to act in an obnoxious manner thereon; or
(2) For any person to (a) enter upon any such school or college premises or (b) loiter around the premises, except on business, without the permission of the principal or president in charge.
Any person violating any of the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and, on conviction thereof, shall pay a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than one thousand dollars or be imprisoned in the county jail for not less than thirty days nor more than ninety days.
§ 16-17-420. Disturbing schools. This statute is so broadly written it is open to conflicting interpretations. First of all it appears to be written in such a way as to apply chiefly to those who are not associated directly with a school but who might be in a position to disrupt a school. The first section, if I’m to assume this is taken from the current SC Code of Laws, is a real winner. If taken out of context it sounds a lot like some of those old Jim Crow laws if a prosecutor or judge wanted to take it that far.
So it goes: ….It shall be unlawful:(1) For any person [does ‘any person’ mean other students or teachers?] willfully or unnecessarily (a) to interfere with or to disturb in any way...students or teachers of any school...in this State, (b) to loiter about such school...premises or (c) to act in an obnoxious manner thereon...
Tell me, is this enforceable? What’s the percentage of students at most schools who might have disturbed, loitered or acted obnoxiously during the school day at least once in their high school experience...and particularly at lunch? From what it sounds like I don't think this section of the state code would fly if the details were to be fully aired on most students nabbed in this case.
Now if the charges were to be assault, vandalism and destruction of property we would be describing a very different situation and one that would require a better defined argument by the authorities. A lot more questions could be raised about the school’s leadership if charges included inciting a riot but we’re not going to see school district authorities let that one out of the bag even if it did apply to a handful of those actually involved. That might cause too much blow back on the administration if charges like that were filed.
In the absence of solid evidence, don't try to tell me that a Black high school kid who is simply rounded up while standing outside the high school's cafeteria where a fight has broken out is guilty of anything other than being Black and in the vicinity of something school authorities let get out of control. Nowhere in state law or the student handbook is this legally or ethically justifiable. CCSD administrators don’t want to admit they allowed an avoidable disturbance to breakout on their watch.
It was CCSD and members of Nancy McGinley’s administration that forced an entire high school into the substandard Brentwood campus with its long reputation of failure. The CCSB ignored the risks when it endorsed the superintendent’s radical plan with questionable supporting data to reorganize N. Chas. HS after it was labeled as a chronically failing school. CCSD, the superintendent and the county school board also ignored community concerns questioning the wisdom of moving the school twice in the same year, if only temporarily, to what was originally designed for use as an elementary school.
Sounds more like CCSD is criminally guilty of bad management practices. A total absence of common sense might be thrown in as an additional charge against the superintendent and the county board’s leadership.
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