Damned School Boards

[Minimalist]

( As an adjunct to my Damned Catholics/Damned Protestants/ etc threads in the News and Activism forum I am starting this one for idiot school administrators who desperately need to have their heads pulled out of their assholes.)

First up: Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania

http://news.yahoo.com/pa-kindergartner-s...57936.html

MOUNT CARMEL, Pa. (AP) — A 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl who told another girl she was going to shoot her with a pink toy gun that blows soapy bubbles has been suspended from kindergarten.

[Nine]

MOUNT CARMEL, Pa. (AP) — A 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl who told another girl she was going to shoot her with a pink toy gun that blows soapy bubbles has been suspended from kindergarten.

Wow... Just wow..

[Annik]

My brother was suspended from school for a week in elementary school for something similar. He was digging in the dirt with a stick while he was out on the bathroom break and a teacher approached him. After being asked what he was doing, he jokingly answered that he was burying a bomb. With twig with was drawing pictures in the dirt with. He didn't get into any trouble for that (with our parents).

[Nine]

My brother was suspended from school for a week in elementary school for something similar. He was digging in the dirt with a stick while he was out on the bathroom break and a teacher approached him. After being asked what he was doing, he jokingly answered that he was burying a bomb. With twig with was drawing pictures in the dirt with. He didn't get into any trouble for that (with our parents).

Looks like I was lucky to grow up where I did. I would run around pretending to shoot people and blow people up till I was nearing the end of primary school. I even remember bringing toy guns to school to mess around with at break times.

In our schools nativity play I was the only Shepard pretending to shoot the audience.

[Minimalist]

The NRA would love you.

[Darth]

What child doesn't go round shooting, lazering, blowing up, impaling and obliterating their friends?

Damned impenetrable forcefields...

[Nine]

What child doesn't go round shooting, lazering, blowing up, impaling and obliterating their friends?

Damned impenetrable forcefields...

I managed to pretend to shoot at some of the kids who were meant to be sheep before the teachers gave into my demands and game me lego.

[Mystical]

I'm glad you mentioned school boards, I was just thinking about them literally not a few minutes earlier.

As for the little pink bubble gun: wow. WOWuh. Who actually thinks a 5yr old little girl with a bubble gun is a threat? Not anyone, ever. Now if she followed that motion with, "Die motherfucker" then maYbeee..

I was thinking about how school boards are probably inundated by gun talk, and meanwhile real issues are getting swept under the rug, just like the gun issues got swept when more 'high priority' issues were being highlighted.

Here's an issue that's incredibly pertinent: Health screening.
Sure they check your eyes and your ears. But, if my own schools for instance, made a stand by upholding their illness policy for instance--when I was chronically ill growing up--by requiring my parents to take me to the doctor and actually FIND OUT what's wrong with me: I could've grown up
A)knowing I'm sick, not lazy
B)thinking I'm normal just sick as opposed to abnormal, and thus much happier and productive.
C)not reaching my adolescence so incredibly ill that I became disabled from it for 7yrs and cost the government massive amounts of money
in hospital care and emergency surgeries. Not to mention all the ER visits growing..

I know it's sort of a specific issue, but if you think about it: it's monumental. Schools have the ability to do so much, with what they're given. They're given authority to deny a child access to school without stipulations. Hell, they can even force the childrens' Doctors' hands, by requiring a proper diagnosis in order to attend school.
They're given access to developing children at a highly pertinent stage of their lifetime when society is required to be somewhere, every day, on a regular basis. You don't think your work cares if you have a heart condition, do you? No. But schools should. During Physical Education, for instance, why not make those goof off (yet admittedly super cool) PE teachers actually do something. If mine didn't just excuse me to sit out of the activities when I was too weak to move or had purple lips: and actually called my parents or told the school nurse there's something up with me--then maybe I could've gotten screened through the doctor. Or how about the office staff, who just let it slide that I was gone twice as many days that their policy allowed for, for the mere fact that I had straight A's? I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just pointing out big red flags that could've been caught.

I feel like it's the school nurses' responsibility to make sure that every student at her school is healthy, or adequately diagnosed. God knows she has a whole year, year after year, with the same students--to do it. If I were a school nurse, I'd make it my priority to educate parents on common illnesses, and weed out students who are having a difficult time health-wise. There was always that little girl at school with a headache, or the one who never came to school with a coat on. One who was always sick with a cold of some sort.. Why not use ones' authority to stipulate to parents that it's not okay to neglect their children, or to not seek treatment for chronic issues? To hold them accountable for their childrens' well-being instead of being a silent yet consensual observer? That's just what I'd say. Yeah it's the harder road, it's the more direct approach, and it's going to piss off some people. But, so what? Are any of those things reasons to deny our children the treatment they so desperately need and are unable to champion for, themselves?

According to the CDC website: 4% of students are missing more than 11 days of school due to illness or injury.

Even if the school nurse was able to focus specifically on this 4%, she'd find that some of them aren't gone due to real illness. By being direct and holding parents accountable for their actions: abuse, and neglect could also be identified and addressed. The others, through a simple interview with parents or the students themselves, could be guided in order to prevent illness in future through education or by getting proper diagnosis through their doctors.

Another issue that got me when I was growing up: NO INSURANCE. According to the CDC: 7% of students have no health insurance.
Now what kind of BS is this? EVERY child should have health insurance! I don't care if your parents make just above the cutoff limit salary wise: that child should not go without. The fact that there's a single child without, indicates to me that there is a major failure on school boards' part to A)Require insurance of students in order to attend school, B) Advocate to the state legislation for better coverage policies based on its' citizens' needs.
This statistic is a failure not on parents parts, but the governing powers.

I'm sick and tired of school boards addressing only what they are "forced" to. Why not make it a policy of doing your job and doing it well? It is our kids, after all. It is our future. It is our family. Why do they not care, and how can that possibly fly? Who pays these bastards?!
Where'd accountability go? Maybe they're getting paid too much and thus distracted from what their duties are..
I vote giving Teachers their jobs, and seeing just what happens then.

[Minimalist]

Where'd accountability go?

Derailed by "rules." Bureaucrats love rules.

[5thHorseman]

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I shot my school board. no problems anymore.