Lockdown at Blair?
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Anonymous
You are literally taking one terrible incident, although inexcusable and using that as the reason to dismantle a program instead of doing a comprehensive analysis on what is going on at MCPS schools. We should've been looking at the data and not making massive decisions without a transition plan. Have we not learned not to paint a group with a broad brush? There are terrible racist teachers too..should we get rid of them? |
Anonymous
The push to remove the SROs came from high school students - i.e., the people who are impacted, in the schools, without offices (cushy or otherwise). Some people are spending a lot of energy attacking people for attacking the police. I wish that they would spend half of that energy attacking the problems that lead people to attack the police, instead of minimizing those problems as "a few bad apples." What do bad apples do, proverbially? They spoil the whole barrel. |
Anonymous
Yes, obviously terrible racist teachers do not belong in the schools. How is that even a question? |
Anonymous
As others have already said, there are alternatives to either arresting a student, or "give him a hug and all will be well". I am sure you would not want your child arrested because he happens to be 6' tall and was disruptive during class. The only reason you think this is a reasonable alternative is because you know it won't be your child who gets arrested. MCPS does not know how to educate students of color, they sure AF do not know how to deal with behavior issues among students of color so of course they want the police there, it is a way of passing the buck. |
Anonymous
Enlighten us then... how would you deal with a student yelling, swearing and making threats in class? |
Anonymous
Again, why do the Principals want SROs? Again, no one has answered that question. What do you propose to do with students who threaten other students and staff? Why don't you go to the school and spend your energy escorting said student from class to class and getting that student to behave. Until you can answer those questions, I don't think you bring value to the conversation. Some people spend a lot of energy complaining about the few bad police apples. You have offered ZERO meaningful ways to address it. It's like Elrich's email. All fluff, no action. |
Anonymous
They won't answer that question. It's just easier to complain about some few bad apples. I really think these people should volunteer in the HS and be the ones responsible for badly behaving students. |
Anonymous
Exactly, it's all crickets. Because there is no real way for anyone in the classroom to de-escalate, and someone has to come in and escort the student out. Whether it's an SRO, or someone else, it has to be someone who can come quickly and take charge, because when this type of behavior occurs, it's frankly terrifying and should not impact the whole classroom including the teacher, and frankly there is nothing the teacher or other students can do at that point. |
Anonymous
And to add to this, it doesn't matter who exhibits this type of behavior, people of color (as the above poster put it), or the skinny white girl in the back of the classroom. They should be quickly escorted out and the same consequence applied. And in my view that should be a talking to by staff followed by an automatic suspension... at least this is how things were handled in schools in the past during saner times. |
Anonymous
I mean, sure, and we can give them all unicorns to ride to school. If we didn't have decades of experience and reams of actual data to show that SROs are particularly vicious to kids of color, then we would be having a different conversation. If abusive cops were subject to accountability, oversight, or consequences, we'd be having a different conversation right now. But that's not the world we live in, and that's not the reality of policing in 2021. |
Anonymous
What do a few bad apples do? They spoil the whole barrel. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/one-bad-apple-spoil-the-barrel-metaphor-phrase |
Anonymous
Righ but it's not about SRO, but someone who works at the school who can take control of the situation so the classroom can resume to normal. We can also claim that kids of color are particularly vicious to teachers, staff and other students more so than other students... but how is that helpful? What matters is finding a way to de-escalate the situation quickly so the teacher can continue to teach in the time left. And I think we can agree that someone should not only be able to give an appropriate consequence, but actually talk to and explain to the student why what they did is not acceptable. |
Anonymous
This is why I think the incident last year played such a vital role in swinging public opinion. As someone who is very involved in local politics, I can tell you that abolishing SROs was a fringe position before that time. Yes, some elected officials were supportive, but they were largely not willing to take a public stand. Then you get a video of police abusing a kid barely out of preK, and public opinion moved quickly once it became clear that MPD was disinclined to punish the officers at all. There were zero professional consequences. So, you had people who would have been in the mushy middle move into the abolish camp because it laid bare how unwilling the police (even in Montgomery County) are to hold their own accountable for their actions. |
Anonymous
and once again, you don't answer the question of what to do with these students and why Principals wanted SROs. Thanks for proving my point that it's easier to complain about the police than actually address the real issue of threats by students in schools. If your kid gets threatened at school, will you tell your kid just suck it up and go hug the person threatening you? |
Anonymous
Who is held accountable when a student is threatening and belligerent at school? |