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Birmingham News – There’s a better way to discipline Birmingham city schools students other than arresting them.
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Opelika-Auburn News – Group says Ala. teacher-student sex laws too weak
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Good Morning, Danny…
Opelika-Auburn News – Group says Ala. teacher-student sex laws too weak
–Teacher Sex Abuse–
Do you know why teachers, administrators and other school employees keep having sex with minors despite hundreds of them being caught each year? Because the vast majority of them who are doing it don’t get caught. People go on and on about Catholic priests, but you can’t open the papers without reading about the sexual misdeeds of public school teachers, administrators and other school employees.
This is one reason why laws have been adopted in many other states to make sexual relationships between students and teachers criminal. Teachers can groom young teens for exploitation and then have sex with them when they become 17. Such relationships are tainted by the power-authority position of teachers, administrators and other school employees.
It’s not impossible for minors to freely consent to sexual relationships with persons in authority over them, the risk of something less than free consent is judged sufficiently high to justify the prohibition. Teachers, administrators and other school employees should be evaluated in every possible way before being allowed in a class room with children. This is happening way too often, to the point where parents are once again afraid to send their kids to school.
Only a state with a legislature as dysfunctional as Alabama’s could fail to agree on laws punishing educators for having sex with their students. Do you realize that without these forms of electronic communication the evidence to convict many teachers, administrators and other school employees would be lacking. How many students in ages past were abused and disbelieved?
S.E.S.A.M.E.
http://www.sesamenet.org/
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Birmingham News – There’s a better way to discipline Birmingham city schools students other than arresting them.
–Zero Tolerance, Zero Sense–
Students are completely unprepared for the switch between educator-as-friend and educator-as-adversary. And educators use their status as “friend” to take advantage of the student because, as they say, they have lots of other students to worry about. When push comes to shove, all school administrators care more about their schools than your child. – Yes, administrators will lie to get information. – Students aren’t prepared for this. Zero-tolerance is fair and just for students, but not for staff?
This is not a matter of reimpowerment. School officials don’t want the discretion. They worked to pass laws that eliminated their discretion. Why? It’s easier for them to say their hands are tied than to continually try to justify the use of their discretion. Educators love mandatory punishments despite the injustice and hardships imposted on students. Students are powerless. Why should the powerful be inconvenienced for the sake of the powerless? It saves face. It saves time. It’s all about system needs and those needs trump justice. Beyond sacrificing justice, zero-tolerance rules promote official bullying and disrespect. Just at the time in their lives when students need most to bond with, and trust, adults, students see the authority figures in their schools abandoning common sense – and responding without compassion or discretion.
Under a policy of zero tolerance, any exercise in the kind of bad judgment kids are famous for could dash college dreams, cut the last tether keeping a kid in school or land that child in front of a judge. And while a student may escape the worst zero tolerance has to offer, what lesson has been learned in the process? That adults have absolute authority, but are also blindly obedient to an unseen power? That Big Brother is watching, and that there is no good explanation, no extenuating circumstance, no second chances? I think students learn from zero tolerance policies that schools are not safe for them.
Schools across the country in recent years have blurred the line between teaching and meting out justice. Alabama legislators have repeatedly spurned efforts to ease the zero-tolerance mania. The lawmakers have rejected bills that would have allowed that a teenager caught carrying a plastic cafeteria utensil in a backpack or a Midol in a pocketbook might not be a criminal worthy of expulsion but just a kid doing something perfectly rational, even if it violated the letter of the code of conduct. Once again, just like scissors, school rubber bands are not weapons but rubber bands possessed by students are automatically deemed to be weapons. I can hardly wait until the first student is ordered into counseling for rubber band possession to see if s/he might be a budding mass murderer.
Better yet, let’s start a pool to guess when the first student will be suspended for drawing a picture of a rubber band, or writing about rubber bands. Here’s a novel idea: punish students who misuse rubber bands, not those who merely possess them. Is that too radical of an idea for today’s educators?
Of course, you know why this is not acceptable don’t you? It’s all about system needs. There’s no need to conduct an investigation to see who misused a rubber band. Finding a rubber band means guilt. That’s how the system serves it’s own needs. It vastly expands the number of automatically guilty students. It doesn’t matter whether the student brought the rubber band to school, found it on the floor or possessed it for no reason other than the fact that another student shot it in his/her direction.
Maybe the students should organize a rubber band day, when every student brings a rubber band to school. Then we’d find out if educators really have the cojones or chutzpah to suspend the entire school for wanton rubber band possession.
Discretion and proportion are lost concepts in the realm of public school behavior codes. Schools must set clear expectations and enforce rules, but they must also be places where it is safe for kids to be kids, where mistakes are expected, explained and examined. The goal is education, not expulsion, detention, or suspension. Parents: You know children do crazy and stupid things. Do you really want to put your children in the hands of government bureaucrats who completely ignore this reality and impose severe punishments for childish indiscretions? Do you really want the language and acts of your 10-year-old interpreted exactly like the language and acts of real terrorists? If not, you’ll take your children out of government schools pronto. They are defenseless against draconian rules enforced by system-centered administrators who’d rather bully students than educate them.
Zero-tolerance doesn’t have to mean draconian punishment. We don’t jail people for a year for not wearing their seat belts. You have to wonder how such policies get enacted when schools are supposedly run by boards that reflect community values. The truth is, the complexity of school laws and regulations make mostly uninformed school board members increasingly dependent on the recommendations of administrators. Consequently, boards go along with them [to avoid mistakes] until something happens that causes the community to dissent. Rather than pro-actively represent community values, school boards are increasingly reactive. People have to realize that the way zero tolerance works is by punishing lots of students who aren’t dangerous. It is my experience, no more than 2 to 3% of students are incorrigible.
School officials don’t act in the spirit of education. School administrators, and officials, regularly employ a bullying technique. And an appeals process is nonexistent. School officials act to avoid two things: 1. lawsuits; and 2. the use of discretion when protracted disagreement is nearly certain to evolve. They love the “just doing my job” defense for making unreasonable decisions. What they won’t tell you is whether they or their lobbying groups actually supported the passage of laws to remove discretion in these kinds of cases. Fred Hink of Katy Zero Tolerance, a group dedicated to protecting parents’ rights in the discipline process, said these practices not only lack common sense, they do not appropriately address issues such as disability considerations, due process and the long-range effects of placing children in alternative education programs.
Parents report students being disciplined for engaging in conduct ranging from spitting, chewing gum and talking loud to carrying items that resemble prohibited items, aggravated assault, sexual assault or drug and alcohol-related offenses. Heavy-handed zero-tolerance policies disproportionately affect those often less able to defend themselves. School officials insist that educators need the authority to take whatever disciplinary measures they deem necessary to regulate conduct and maintain a safe environment.
Sure, but that’s not the issue, is it? The issue is a sense of proportion and justice, a degree of discretion, and consideration of aggravating and mitigating factors. None of these imply educators will lack authority to take needed disciplinary action. What they do imply is that the judgment of educators could be open to review, and that’s why educators love mandatory punishments despite the injustice and hardships imposted on students. Students are powerless. Why should the powerful be inconvenienced for the sake of the powerless?
Notice how educators make a truthful statement that avoids the issue. This, from the people who insist students answer the questions asked on tests, not the questions they want to answer or the ones they wish had been asked. How honorable is it to avoid addressing the real issues?
-Pookie
STOP THE PAIN!!
I just read this article while having coffee with my husband. After spending the last 40 years employed at a local small business, we’ve seen our savings dwindle in a dreadful stock market. Also, over the last year or so, we’ve experienced gas increases, food increases and according to the PSC over the last two years since the last phone deregulation, telephone bill increases. Apparently, now, AT&T and a couple other fat cats want to remove a CAP on their rate increases. We live on a fixed income and can’t deal with any more pain coming our way. Please stop the nonsense!!
Josi
March 31, 2009
ALABAMA VOICES: Stand for people
By Loretta Bacon
The Alabama Legislature has an opportunity to choose between voters it is supposed to represent and corporate interests with big campaign contributions.
The telecommunications giant AT&T supports Senate Bill 373 and House Bill 478, which completely deregulate basic telephone service, a critical service for many older-low income Alabamians. The Alabama Senate will be debating the bill today and we urge our senators to vote against this measure, or at the very least modify the legislation to protect Alabamians who voted them into office.
Under these bills, the price of basic residential service and optional services, such as call waiting, will be completely deregulated as of January 2011. Currently, the Alabama Public Service Commission has oversight over telephone service in the state, and rate hikes are tied to the rate of inflation. If our Legislature needs an argument against letting corporate America govern itself self-regulation, they need only open a newspaper and read about the billions of dollars going to bail out the mortgage industry.
The wording of these bills leaves no doubt that Alabamians will be at the mercy of the telephone companies. SB 373 reads, “The commission shall not have any jurisdiction, right, power, authority, or duty to regulate, supervise, control, oversee, or monitor, directly or indirectly, the rates, charges, classifications, provision, or any aspect of broadband service, broadband enabled services, VoIP services, or information services.”
These bills don’t just leave the fox to guard the henhouse; they remove the door to the henhouse and the fence around the yard. Yet members of the Alabama Senate will vote today to approve this bill.
Proponents of this bill will tell you it is a good thing because it will increase competition. These same people said competition would flourish after the Legislature passed the Communications Reform Act of 2005. They said market competition would drive prices down, but according to the PSC, there are fewer than half as many telephone providers in Alabama today as there were in 2005 when the act was passed.
Also, prior to passage of the act, the price for basic telephone service in Alabama had remained unchanged since 1995. But it increased 4.1 percent during 2008 and is authorized to increase another 3 percent during 2009. This initial step toward deregulation in 2005 resulted in fewer competitors and higher prices, so how can our legislators justify further deregulation?
Even in those areas where competition exists, to get a competitive rate on basic telephone service, you have to sign on to “packages” of multiple services, such as phone service with additional features, video and Internet. Older and low-income Alabamians aren’t looking for bells and whistles; they need basic telephone service to maintain contact with friends and family, and they will ultimately pay the highest telephone rates under the provisions of SB 373 and HB 478.
Proponents of the bill might also point to provisions for “Lifeline” service as a safety net for older and low-income residents. But under this provision, the Lifeline Assistance Plan, “would allow certain low-income persons such as persons qualifying for Medicaid or Section 8 housing to automatically qualify for a discount on their telephone service.”
AARP supports the Lifeline provision and we applaud its inclusion. Unfortunately, this provision doesn’t protect the population most affected by these bills. Most older Alabamians aren’t on Medicaid or in Section 8 housing. They are retirees like my husband and me. We worked hard to support our families, our churches and our communities. Some of us have saved a little along the way, but now live on Social Security and/or a fixed limited income.
Which is why we’re asking the Legislature to vote against these bills. But if the members won’t vote to protect the people who voted them into office, we’re asking them to consider the AARP amendment to delay any action until 2013, get a clearer picture of competition in Alabama and survey other states on the effect of deregulation.
AARP’s proposed amendment asks for “an investigation and report on the competitive alternatives to basic local service.” We’re also asking for a “survey of other states that have price deregulated basic local service and optional features, documenting the level of price increases or decreases experienced by consumers in those states.”
If, in fact, these bills will increase competition and lower rates, then an investigation and survey will show that. And if the goal is to increase competition and lower rates, why completely remove oversight by the Public Service Commission, a body established to protect Alabama consumers?
The argument flies in the face of common sense. And in a time when billions of dollars are being paid out to rescue financial institutions going broke because of the lack of oversight, we can’t imagine that our elected officials would choose that path.
To learn more about telephone competition in Alabama, visit http://www.aarp.org/al.
Loretta Bacon is a member of the AARP Capitol Advocacy Team.
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