My latest went up at Da Tech Guy: Re: About Those Abuse Cases

———————-

On Monday, DaTechGuy wrote about the sexual abuse cases taking place in schools as highlighted by Stacy McCain:

Lately Stacy McCain has been doing a large series on sexual criminals.  Yesterday he focused on Teachers

If you pay attention to the news, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that America’s public schools are staffed by sex-crazed perverts

It’s not his first dive into these waters but this time Glenn Reynolds linked with the line:

Obviously, we need to end mandatory celibacy and let high school teachers marry.

Now this is a story we’ve been covering for a while, but as we’ve also had a real bump in readership in 2013 & 2014 so for new readers at DaTechGuy Blog let me acquaint you with some stories we covered and & posts we did that you might have missed on this subject over the years:

The Guardian April 29th 2010

Sexual abuse scandal rocks Boy Scouts of America after $18.5m payout

Organisation accused of cover-up as it seeks to keep thousands of ‘perversion files’ secret

Oddly this subject wasn’t raised when they changed their rules

Read the whole thing.  These stories don’t involve men wearing White collars or fit anti-gay narratives, so the media

Over at my pet project, ConMom, I’ve chronicled many stories of abuse. I was pleased to see an Instalanche on the ConMom category ‘Who is Teaching Your Kid?’, but sad at the same time I even have a category like that. Glenn Reynolds called it a ‘troubling collection’ and he’s right. It’s disturbing.

Back to Re: Oh THOSE abuse stories

Here’s my contribution to those horror stories, which for the most part, are going under-reported in the media. If you’re not wearing a white collar or running for office, these stories are largely reported then forgotten. The specific one I want to concentrate on is one that made a top ten list at Huffington Post. It’s of a North Carolina former middle school principal named David Ellis Edwards.

What earned him that top ten spot? He raped a boy in his office while the parents were outside the room.

A former middle school principal in North Carolina is accused of sexually assaulting a student while the boy’s unsuspecting parent was outside the room.

David Ellis Edwards, 49, was arrested Friday and charged with second-degree forcible sex offense, sexual acts with a student, taking indecent liberties with a minor and crimes against nature, WTVD reported.

Deputies say that between 2009 and 2011, Edwards molested at least three boys between the ages of 11 and 14. At least one of the incidents allegedly occurred in Edward’s office while the victim’s parent sat in a nearby waiting area.  – Huffington Post

The article goes on to say the police think there are at least three more victims. It’s hard to know much more because “The incident report has been sealed, due to the sensitivity of the allegations.” That’s just as well, the kids involved need to be protected. This guy, however, deserves the 9th circle of Hell and a white-hot poker where the sun doesn’t shine.

Abuse isn’t limited to just the sexual contact nature. There is a broader degree of what is and can be considered abuse in schools. There’s a few other aspects to consider, like zero tolerance — a topic I’ve piled into what I call “The Great Public School Experiment. Much of that zero tolerance lunacy only goes in one direction. Let’s not forget the educrat idiot brigades, of which Arne Duncan recently found himself the star of in his defense of the Common Core by saying those opposed are mainly ‘White Suburban Moms’.

Another avenue of what can be considered abuse is corruption coupled with neglect, as we recently found out was going on in a NYC school.  Via NY Post:

Students at PS 106 in Far Rockaway, Queens, have gotten no math or reading and writing books for the rigorous Common Core curriculum, whistleblowers say.

The 234 kids get no gym or art classes. Instead, they watch movies every day.

“The kids have seen more movies than Siskel and Ebert,” a source said.

The school nurse has no office equipped with a sink, refrigerator or cot.

The library is a mess: “Nothing’s in order,” said a source. “It’s a junk room.”

No substitutes are hired when a teacher is absent — students are divvied up among other classes.

A classroom that includes learning-disabled kids doesn’t have the required special-ed co-teacher.

About 40 kindergartners have no room in the three-story brick building. They sit all day in dilapidated trailers that reek of “animal urine,” a parent said; rats and squirrels noisily scamper in the walls and ceiling.

NO GYM OR ART: With no phys-ed or art classes, students are left to watch movies, including “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Fat Albert.

NO SPACE: Without enough space in the main brick building, kindergartners are taught in what sources say are rat-infested trailers.

The article goes on to talk about the principal, Marcella Sills, who apparently shows up whenever she feels like it but is paid well for her lack of attendance:

Via NY POST – J.C. Rice

When she is out, an assistant principal is left in charge. Yet Sills, who gets a $128,207 salary, also pockets overtime pay — $2,900 for 83 hours in 2011, the latest available records show. – NY Post

Your tax dollars — Funding no-show principals with six figure salaries. The parents are finally speaking out, but one has to ask how long they’ve been doing so and had been ignored. That might be because no one is literally listening. Parents used to have a way to have their voice heard at their schools via the PTA. Now, they are left to contact administrators on their own or try to band together and make noise outside of the school.

Control and involvement in our schools by parents has eroded a lot since I attended primary school. The PTA, as I have experienced it, no longer is a Parent-Teacher Association that works to improve curriculum, conditions and set rules or guidelines like the one my mother belonged to when I was in school.  The ones I’ve come in contact with these days are more concerned with covering all the things a school budget should be able to cover like bringing in speakers, teacher appreciation related activities, having book and science fair and more. Don’t get me wrong, these things are important. The social aspect to schools for the kids and teachers is invaluable. Having said that, the primary function should be engagement in the education process, not social activities. This is especially apparent as we have seen how the Common Core was implemented largely by stealth. One has to wonder what would have happened if an engaged group of parents via a PTA were introduced to Common Core before implementation.

One final thought on abuse in schools, or rather abuse of schools as the case may be. It seems the Department of Justice has decided that discipline in schools is racist.  Via The Daily Caller:

Education experts decried a new memo from the Departments of Justice and Education that instructs public schools throughout the country to cease punishing disruptive students if they fall into certain racial categories, such as black or Hispanic.

The letter, released on Wednesday, states that it is a violation of federal law for schools to punish certain races more than others, even if those punishments stem from completely neutral rules. For example, equal numbers of black students and white students should be punished for tardiness, even if black students are more often tardy than white students.

Here is the relevant section of the letter:

“Schools also violate Federal law when they evenhandedly implement facially neutral policies and practices that, although not adopted with the intent to discriminate, nonetheless have an unjustified effect of discriminating against students on the basis of race.

Examples of policies that can raise disparate impact concerns include policies that impose mandatory suspension, expulsion, or citation (e.g., ticketing or other fines or summonses) upon any student who commits a specified offense — such as being tardy to class, being in possession of a cellular phone, being found insubordinate, acting out, or not wearing the proper school uniform.”

So, in a nutshell, the DOJ wants quotas on discipline. So if teachers have to discipline any given race of child in their class, they then have to make sure they hit all the others present there? The stupid, it burns.   I guess I missed the memo where the DOJ was now the Department of Education, which by the way, is unconstitutional in and of itself.  Those quotas? Well, that is another example of more local control being ceded to the federal government.

Weasel Zippers ran this story from CNS about the DOJ wanting to know about the race, gender and more of misbehaving students. which is a straight shot to the discipline quotas letter. All the DOJ has to do it be an approved party and they can get access to all of this data via the Department of Education’s National Education Data Model (NEDM). How?

Common Core.

The Department of education made it a stipulation that the states had to build Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) when they adopted the Common Core. States are required to send data collected via these SLDS’s to the Department of Education as part of the agreement that went along with funding.

I can’t speak for other states, but in North Carolina, that includes juvenile record via USDDC is the Uniform System of Disciplinary Data Collection.  CEDARS is the SLDS for North Carolina. Those opposing Common Core and upset about the data collection have been told we are over-reacting. I assure you, we’re not. The Department of Public Instruction in NC has made denials about data collection, of which were promptly refuted by yours truly.

It also should be mentioned here that Arne Duncan effectively stripped the medical privacy rights of students out of FERPA (Family Educational Right Privacy Act) last year.  This is important to know, because whether your kid visits the nurse or the school psychologist, that data is being collected. All the DOJ needs to do is access it. By the looks of these discipline quotas, they may just have found their way in.