Political Correctness Run Amok... - Page 2 - U.S. Politics Online: A Political Discussion Forum

DGG · #16 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattLarson

Yeah, I can buy that.

We just had a middle school keep their students in the school until 9:30 pm because of a thunderstorm.

Not, mind you, a severe storm. No NWS watch or warning was issued, just a thunderstorm. In fact, it wasn't even raining when they decided to hold the students - someone heard a rumble of thunder in the distance and went into panic mode.

(Florida, for those unaware of our greatness, is the thunderstorm capital of the country. We have more thunderstorms in a given year than any other place in the US).

Here's the kicker - when the students' parents came to the school to pick their own children up the administration refused to release the children to their parents. The administration tried to blame their computers being down for preventing them from releasing the students.

Now we're talking 7th through 9th graders here - students who are clearly capable of recognizing their own parents......

Fortunately, a couple of Sheriff's deputies brought some badly needed common sense to the situation and compelled the school to release the kids to their parents, after verifying with the child that these were, in fact, their parents.

Apparently, the impetus for this policy is that two or three years ago, a child was hit by lightning a half an hour after getting off the bus a block from his house, so the school decided to implement this police "for the children".

BTW - the elementary school a block away sent their kids home on time - (while it was light out, and not raining).

This looks nearly criminal. False imprisonment is a felony, the only element that may be missing is the "reasonable means of escape" element. If a kid would have decided to leave the school, would he or she have been stopped from doing so, by force if necessary? In that case, this was probably a case of false imprisonment.

Beer · #17 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

When will the APA classify bullying as a mental disorder?
seriously. it should be. Bullies turn out to be criminals in some circumstances.

Banning tag, or whatever, isn't the answer. Ban the damn bully. Put him in a halfway house until the freak straightens out.

soot · #18 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by DGG

This looks nearly criminal. False imprisonment is a felony, the only element that may be missing is the "reasonable means of escape" element. If a kid would have decided to leave the school, would he or she have been stopped from doing so, by force if necessary? In that case, this was probably a case of false imprisonment.

Quick question:

Are schools legally responsible for the health and welfare of students while on campus?

If the answer to that question is yes than I think the decission to keep the students in the school because of the danger posed by the thunderstorm is legally defensible in that the school was acting under the authority of law to carry out its legal responsibility and fullfiling its obligation to the public trust.

If an individual or institution is acting under the authority of law then the false imprisonment claim breaks down.

I just don't have any idea what the law says in regard to a school's obligation to prevent children from entering into situations which the school authority feels present an imminent risk of danger to a child.

ThorHammer · #19 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beer

When will the APA classify bullying as a mental disorder?
seriously. it should be. Bullies turn out to be criminals in some circumstances.

Banning tag, or whatever, isn't the answer. Ban the damn bully. Put him in a halfway house until the freak straightens out.

Are you fucking serious? I have yet to meet a kid who wasn't a bully to some other kid in one way or another.

MattLarson · #20 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by soot

Quick question:

Are schools legally responsible for the health and welfare of students while on campus?

If the answer to that question is yes than I think the decission to keep the students in the school because of the danger posed by the thunderstorm is legally defensible in that the school was acting under the authority of law to carry out its legal responsibility and fullfiling its obligation to the public trust.

If an individual or institution is acting under the authority of law then the false imprisonment claim breaks down.

I just don't have any idea what the law says in regard to a school's obligation to prevent children from entering into situations which the school authority feels present an imminent risk of danger to a child.

There is absolutely no theory of law that would permit the school system to exert dominion over the child in place of the physically present parent.

What happened here was a school administrator way overestimated their authority and deliberately attempted to interfere with the parental rights of these students' parents.

This is important to note - we are not talking about kids walking home unaccompanied in the storm. We are talking about parents who were physically there to pick their children up from school being told that they could not do so.

This is not the prerogative of the school to decide. Ever.

Matt

DGG · #21 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattLarson

There is absolutely no theory of law that would permit the school system to exert dominion over the child in place of the physically present parent.

What happened here was a school administrator way overestimated their authority and deliberately attempted to interfere with the parental rights of these students' parents.

This is important to note - we are not talking about kids walking home unaccompanied in the storm. We are talking about parents who were physically there to pick their children up from school being told that they could not do so.

This is not the prerogative of the school to decide. Ever.

My point exactly.

DGG · #22 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThorHammer

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beer

When will the APA classify bullying as a mental disorder?
seriously. it should be. Bullies turn out to be criminals in some circumstances.

Banning tag, or whatever, isn't the answer. Ban the damn bully. Put him in a halfway house until the freak straightens out.

Are you fucking serious? I have yet to meet a kid who wasn't a bully to some other kid in one way or another.

Bullying and being bullied are natural parts of growing up in a social environment. It is a way for children to learn the social skills and boundaries necessary later in life. I would rather say a child that would never bully any other child seems to have a mental disorder.

soot · #23 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattLarson

There is absolutely no theory of law that would permit the school system to exert dominion over the child in place of the physically present parent.

What happened here was a school administrator way overestimated their authority and deliberately attempted to interfere with the parental rights of these students' parents.

This is important to note - we are not talking about kids walking home unaccompanied in the storm. We are talking about parents who were physically there to pick their children up from school being told that they could not do so.

This is not the prerogative of the school to decide. Ever.

Matt

That's true too.

I can see the school not releasing the kids to walk home.

I think it's stupid - but I can see it.

Not releasing them to the parent until the LEOs have to get involved...

You're sure there isn't more to the story?

I find it hard to believe that any school administrator who had risen to the level of principal or vice-principal would seriously believe they were acting within the law under those circumstances.

You're sure the school authorities didn't make it perfectly clear that they had established a safe and secure procedure under which they were more than willing to release the students to a parent - but some hot-headed parent decided that they were much too busy and much to important to actually cooperate with the school and wait in a line to claim their kid - thus the police were called in?

I would think that's a much more likely scenario then the school telling the parents "fuck you very much but we're not giving you your kid under any circumstances because we are the school and we reign supreme".

Because I'm looking at the other side of the coin where, in our litigious society, the school would want to protect itself from lawsuits over children being released to anyone other than an adult who was able to prove conclusively that they were the childs parent.

Say the school released little Johnny to little Billy's mom - because Johnny and Billy have been frineds since kindergarten and Johnny knows Billy's mom, Billy's mom knows Johnny and they all get along just great.

Then, on the way home from school the rain and thunder and lightening start - the lightening hits a tree - a big old tree branch falls on Billy's mom's SUV and kills everyone on board.

First thing the next morning Johnny's parents sue the principal, the vice principals, teachers and administrators of the school, the civic government of the municipality in which the school is located, the school district and Board of Education, the state and federal government and George Bush (because he is, after all, the root of all evil and wrongdoing).

MattLarson · #24 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Apparently, the school notified the parents that the kids were being held at the school.

Some parents went to pick their kids up, and were refused. It wasn't a matter of waiting to pick their children up - they were told they could not pick their children up.

Noteworthy here is that the elementary school a block or so away sent their kids home on time, with no problems at all.

Here's the local news story on it:

Quote:

Ocoee parents decry lightning policy that held kids at school
Erika Hobbs | Sentinel Staff Writer
August 29, 2007

Sawyer Thornley ended his first week of kindergarten thinking his mama forgot him Friday night as a scary storm raged over Ocoee Elementary School.

"She didn't pick me up until my bedtime at 8 o'clock," Sawyer, 5, said.

His mother, Aimee Thornley, however, spent the five hours after school fuming in the school's lobby as she and hundreds of other parents pleaded, fought and begged with school officials to let their babies go.

"I deserved to get my child," she said.

At Tuesday's Orange County School Board meeting, Superintendent Ron Blocker stood by the district's decision to keep students inside two Ocoee schools until the worst of last Friday's heavy storm that stalled overhead had passed. Officials did not permit parents to sign their children out.

But he said some things would change, and the district would temporarily defer similar decisions in extreme cases to emergency officials.

"This is the best and more prudent thing to do," he said.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,4086500.story

I found this quote, from later in the article, quite telling:

Quote:

However, Vice Chairman Jim Martin, who represents Ocoee schools, drew applause when he said the board needed to determine "where does the school's responsibility for a child end and a parent's begin?"

When the parent is physically there, Jim. Duh.

Another bureaucrat who thinks he has way more authority than he does.

Matt

pramjockey · #25 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

The only reason I could see is for custody issues. Yeah, that may be mom, but mom may not have custody. Without the computer, they couldn't check that, but would be liable for releasing the child to the wrong person.

The schools get put in no-win situations sometimes.

goober · #26 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

I just love the way the right wing wacko reactionary mindset fills in the blanks.

A school bans tag because of bullying, and it unleashes all sorts of ranting and raving, everything except calm reasonable thought (then they'd be Liberals).

No one was ever in a situation where a teacher announced that some kid had ruined it for the whole class by engaging in some prohibited behavior? My reaction to the story is that the school is just trying to bring peer pressure to bear on the problem.
While the "teachers gone insane" theory is possible, I think the group punishment explanation is about 1000 times more likely to be the actual case.
I'll go with the odds on this one.

proUSA · #27 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by pramjockey

Clearly, bullying is something we should not just tolerate, but actively support.

The kids should have played elsewhere on the playground.
By banning TAG, what's going to be next........Kids forced to like each other? Maybe we can have nazi camps for kids how are not tolerant of others (seen this on South Park).

pramjockey · #28 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by proUSA

The kids should have played elsewhere on the playground.
By banning TAG, what's going to be next........Kids forced to like each other? Maybe we can have nazi camps for kids how are not tolerant of others (seen this on South Park).

Blaming the victim, eh?

proUSA · #29 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by pramjockey

Blaming the victim, eh?

You mean the 90+% of the children who won't be allowed to play TAG? Those are the victims.

Wlessard · #30 (**permalink**) 08-30-2007

I read through this thread and the following is all I could think of.

Quote:

How did we survive?
Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have. As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Our baby cribs were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or the BB gun was not available.

We were not ridiculed for this play, not thrown out of school, and didn't all grow up as mass murderers. Most of us grew up with guns in the house and rather than being taught to fear them, we were taught to handle and use them responsibly.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda, but we were never over-weight; we were always outside playing. Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't, had to learn to deal with disappointment.

Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge (amazing we aren't all brain dead from that), and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for about the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself, church was somewhere your friends went on Sunday too (except for the Murdocks down the street, but nobody trusted them anyway),

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations. I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger.

What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot. He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm. Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of over the counter mercurochrome and then we got butt-whooped. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got butt-whooped (physical abuse) there too... and then we got butt-whooped again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough... it wasn't so that they could take the rough berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent. There was surely a Ho-Jo somewhere nearby that would have been safer.

Summers were spent behind the sickle lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive. How sick were my parents?

Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Johnny from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she pick him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have know that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we survive?