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Friday, May 15, 2015

What the media is missing about the bus shooting story: Bus Monitors

Just about every news story about Thursday’s tragic bus shooting has mentioned that the school bus in addition to the driver two monitors. The implication is Duval County is really trying to protect our kids. The thing is the monitors aren’t there to protect them from shooters waiting at bus stops or any other outside threat, they are there to protect the students from each other.

You see we have a violence problem in some of our schools and sure there are lots of outside influences that contribute to it but I and many others don’t believe the district isn’t doing all it can to do stem it. In fact we believe they are exacerbating the problem instead. Things are so bad it’s hard for me to imagine what a child has to do now days to get sent to an alternative school seeing how much they can get away with in a regular one. The list of offenses must truly be spectacular.

Kids need consequences for poor behavior and where I am not advocating cruelty I think a little over correction can be beneficial too. Disrespect a teacher, that’s not an hour in ISSP, instead that’s three days where you are required to show up, do all your work and follow all the directions or you get more days. Kids fighting, a minimum three day suspension which could be reduced to one day if a parent agrees to shadow the kid for a day. I know if my mom were required to be with me at school for the day after I acted up, it would have nipped a lot of future bad behavior in the bud.

By not addressing bad behavior and by not giving consequences for it, the district is courting a tragedy and it’s really a wonder this kind of violence hasn’t already happened in one of our schools and I believe unless we change things up it is just a matter of time before it does.  

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