Bully-proofing schools and neighborhoods

When I first wrote about bullies I entitled it “Our village failed a child.”

However, none of the events since then - including my own writing - have reflected that this is more than a problem for schools, and more than a problem for police, and more than a problem for parents of bullies. Nobody, including myself, has framed it as a problem for our village.

That occurred to me when I reflected on why there was virtually no bullying in my rural school district many years ago. It wasn’t because there were no mean kids among us.

There were, however, three very influential forces: 1) there was always a teacher or an administrator watching when school took up, during recesses, lunch periods, and after school; 2) teachers had the nerve and felt the responsibility to punish misbehaving students; 3) people who lived in my village were looking out for the safety and welfare of kids and they had the courage and the will to help keep the peace.

Bullying and bad behavior by children were everyone’s problem, though it required time and attention and will power.

So why don’t we have a strong network of neighborhood watch groups? Why can’t parents organize to patrol problem areas? Why can’t the PTA get involved? Why aren’t parents standing up in city council meetings demanding police presence at problem areas? Why can’t individuals just do their own patrolling even without being organized or assimilated into a group? Why can’t teachers and administrators get out of the buildings to keep an eye on things?

I think these solutions - or perhaps better solutions - will materialize if and when everybody begins to see the children of our village as a personal responsibility.

Bullies don’t stop, nor should NCS

That Newark City Schools hit back at student bullies in some classroom exercises (reported in the Advocate 1/26/10) is to be commended.

I wrote 12/3/09 that “Our village failed a child” and that it was in part the fault of schools. Now Newark City School administrators have acted to end bullying. Likely they recognize what they’ve accomplished as only the beginning. Meanwhile, lots of folks are jumping in the Advocate comments sections saying it’s not enough. I agree.

Bullying is like obesity, like tooth decay, like bad attitude, like addiction. You can’t make corrections with one talkie-talk field day. You have to fight it. You have to keep fighting it and you have to keep your guard up every single moment.

Some of the commenters indicated that the confrontation of bullies lies mostly or only with school principals, and that some principals are intimidated by parents of bullies. I suspect there is some truth in that, and if it is true, then let’s face off with those parents. Let’s hire security guards. Let’s call the police to the offices of school principals. Let’s take these parents to court. Let’s draw a line in the sand over which these parents and their kid-bullies shall not pass.

Announce that line; make it stick. That line will stand once the word gets out. Meantime, don’t stop with one talkie-talk field day. Do it regularly and encourage PTA groups (do they still have these in Newark?) to take up banderillas.

Our village should now have learned that it should never again fail one of our children. If that takes some unaccustomed toughness on our part, so be it.

Our village failed a child

The Advocate reported yesterday about an incident that put a wide and ugly spotlight on Newark Ohio. It concerns the mistreatment of one of our children and you can read the story at this link and see the WBNS TV report at this link.

That incident would never have occurred if our village hadn’t failed so miserably, including ...

1 - Every driver who passed without stopping - especially the school bus driver. More than 50 drivers passed. I can’t believe all of them failed to call the police; did anyone call and, if so, did the police show up?

2 - Every resident who lived along the street, saw what was happening and did nothing.

3 - The Newark Police Department for not patrolling the streets near schools.

3 - The Newark Police Department for not getting serious about this crime until it received media attention and worldwide exposure on the Internet.

4 - The Newark City Schools for not preparing students for bullies, for not teaching this victim how to react.

5 - The Newark City Schools for maintaining the attitude: It happened off our official property, so we are helpless and we can’t get involved. Not true. Administrators and teachers could maintain a presence along neighboring streets (the principal and teachers at Lincoln did so many years ago when my kids attended that school). They above all, should get involved - personally and professionally.

6 - The Newark City Schools for failing to follow up on this incident; that video tape was surely available to administrators, had they cared enough to ask.

7 - The parents of the bully, of course, who failed to supervise their child.

8 - The parents of the victim who should have known their child could be endangered on her way home and acted to protect her with whatever it takes.

There is a proverb: It takes a village to raise a child.

Only one person did not fail the bully’s victim. That was the person who held a video camera and recorded Newark as it failed one of its children.

Newark Schools achieve distinction - for being toxic

Newark High School is in the 8th percentile for toxicity in the air among 127,800 schools nationwide. Only 9,296 have worse air.

Carson Elementary is in the 3rd percentile, with only 3,210 having worse air, which is an improvement over the former Conrad Elementary, in the 2nd percentile with only 1,103 out of 127,800 having more dangerous air to breathe.

These facts are from a report by USA Today, a summary of which was published by Editor & Publisher.

Polluters most responsible, according to the report, are Owens Corning, Modern Welding Co. of Ohio Inc., Safety-Kleen Systems Inc. of Hebron, Meritor Heavy Vehicle Systems Llc of Heath, and American Electric Power of Conesville.

Chemicals most responsible, the report said, are formaldehyde, 33%; chromium and chromium compounds, 31%; lead and lead compounds, 10%; ammonia, 9%; and cholorine, 5%.

This is ironic in the extreme, after so much was made over second-hand smoke that smoke-haters pushed through a statewide law to clean up their restaurants' air.

That Newark's air is crappy has never been a secret, something everyone can see and smell, but nobody has the guts to square off with the polluters. Nor will they until citizens get up and make it happen.

There was never a more urgent or important service we could provide for our kids than to give them good air to breathe.

Hottinger explains Ohio's child predator law

I took a pop at the law that permits government to go after a teenager as a sex predator for a minor offense when I wrote about it here 10/9/08. I said it was Jay Hottinger's badly written law at fault.

Well, it's a lot more complicated than that. After exchanging correspondence with Jay and his legal assistant I have concluded that the law is indeed imperfect and Jay may have contributed to that imperfection by not being able - any more than any other legislator who voted for it - to envision the loophole that allows prosecutors such as Ken Oswalt to snare a child into the category of sexual predator for inappropriate behavior. Also, that this law will be revised by the Ohio legislature.

Here are are three key paragraphs from Jay's letter to me as they relate to the prosecution of a local teenager under Megan's Law, which he authored, and which was revised under the title Adam Walsh Law:

"I can tell you with 100% certainty that as I was writing the bill, as it was being debated, and as it was being passed with broad and overwhelming bi-partisan support in 2001- the discussion was always on these young people doing very dangerous and serious adult-like crimes.
 
"I was not involved in the Adam Walsh writing but I can tell you that no legislator ever envisioned an incident like our current local situation being used to prosecute a young person as a sex offender and having to register. 
 
"This case is a classic example of why are laws in Ohio are called the Ohio Revised Code.  I believe there certainly needs to be some revision as while this girl broke the law and there needs to be some form of consequences - to label her a sex offender and to have to register for 20 years is tragic and absurd.  I am certainly not condoning her behavior but this possible sentence is not in balance with the offense."

At this link you can read Jay's letter and an explanation by his legislative aide of the laws in question.

Shall we buy another false sense of security?

The most certain way to riches is to invent something that plays on fear, then get the government to make people use it.

Such a maneuver is in the works by a company in Chargrin Falls which manufactures a device "that would warn people when a sex offender is approaching," according to an article in the Cincinnati Post.

Convicted sex offenders would be locked into a monitoring ankle bracelet equipped to set off vibrations in small devices to be carried by folks who want to be alerted when a predator approaches.

Fear of sexual predators creates a ready market. The idea is being pushed by Ohio Senator Tim Grendell, who chairs the state Judiciary Committee on Criminal Justice. He wants a law requiring the existing GPS ankle bracelets to be modified for this purpose.

But even a spokesman for the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center says it won't help because nine in 10 sex crime victims are assaulted by a person they know or trust. "This just plays on the great myths out there, such as the stranger danger myth that's not true," the newspaper quoted her as saying. "It's sending the wrong message and setting people up with a false sense of security."

She's right. Protection from predators should be provided by other family members, mostly moms and dads or guardians. Knowing where kids are and what they are doing and with whom would virtually wipe out this awful problem that has resulted from the breakdown of the family and the refusal of parents and relatives to be responsible.

I don't think legislators can remedy stupid and irresponsible parents; I'm also pretty sure these electronic gimmicks will do no more than make yet another company rich by giving it my tax money.

Forget school-bus seat belts; just take better care of the drivers

The government has begun a campaign to get seat belts installed in school buses. Media have picked up on it, and are making it sound like a good idea.

I drove a school bus for several months, and I bet you can't find many school bus drivers who would agree with these bureaucrats. Most, like me, would be concerned about getting a bus load of kids unstrapped from their seats in case of an emergency.

In fact the National Education Association has mentioned this as a concern among its members. That, along with students swinging buckles as weapons and the near impossibility of ensuring that students wear the belts.

The NEA report accurately describes the incredible challenges we expect of school bus drivers:

"...bus drivers must care for up to 50-70 student charges at a time, while manuevering a large vehicle, contending with traffic, bad weather, and adverse road conditions. And do it all with their backs turned to the students!"

And now government bureaucrats would like drivers to be responsible for getting 50-70 students buckled into a bus and getting them unbuckled and out of the bus if there were an emergency, such as a fire?

Instead of fussing about seat belts, federal and state governments need to focus on the other conditions inside a school bus. If they did, they would 1) mandate that every school bus carry an assistant to the driver, and 2) school bus drivers would be paid at least as much as teachers.

Inniswood Garden is a nice little trip

This is among the Big Bug displays at Inniswood Garden through October 14. If you haven't been to this neat 121-acre park in Westerville, these "art" objects are a good excuse.

There are eight displays constructed of wood like this spider - a grasshopper, ant, and ladybug for instance.

The sculpture is more of a curiosity than great art, but it's a wonderful learning experience for little kids, and the park isn't so large that everyone gets worn out trying to see everything.

Also, there are still flowers about, though not nearly as many as you'd see during the height of growing season. If you go, don't miss "Sisters' Garden," a special place for kids and those who are still kids at heart.

Here's the web site.

Jay, if you really want to help ...

When people are elected to public office they seem suddenly blessed with infinite knowledge that the rest of us lack. This could be the reason that State Representative Jay Hottinger choses to teach us about ways we can become involved in our kids' education and about the perils of the Internet.

His wisdom, for instance, inspired him to instruct us recently that "You should never allow your child to arrange a face-to-face meeting with anyone they meet on-line without a parent present at the meeting."

We didn't know that, but now we have it from an elected official so we will not forget.

Come on, Jay. Fer God's sake, get with the program. Tell us, for instance, what goes on behind the scenes at the state capital. Tell us why taxes are so high. Tell us how votes are purchased by lobbyists. Tell us who's trading what kind of influence in order to get what. Get to the good stuff.

But most of all, tell us why you're not out front as an Ohio lawmaker on making this state safer for students by requiring schools to bus them as suggested in my recent essay "School busing should be mandated."

School busing should be mandated

It's long past time when state lawmakers mandate busing for public school students. Otherwise, busing will always be on the top of the list of services first to be cut by school boards and administrators as they demand - as Newark Schools are always demanding - larger supplies of tax money.

"Vote our tax or your kids walk" is an age-old battle cry from tax-hounds who are paid, in part, to help with the welfare of children.

Strange that it can happen in the New Age of Nanny, in which government can't stop meddling in the most minute details of citizen lives in the pretense of protecting them.

Saving kids from the dangers of walking to school is the one place where government should stick its nose in because schools prefer to put kids at risk rather than to lose tax votes.

Could it be that state lawmakers in reality support this magic vote getter (wink wink). Or is it that they just don't care or just don't get it?

Today's streets are not safe for children to walk by themselves. Aside from the crush of traffic and the danger to any pedestrian therein, little kids also must be protected from today's multitude of perverts that live along the way, and child bullies as well.

It's been many years since my kids went to school, but even back then they were driven or escorted by their mom. In view of the dwindling safety of thoroughfares, it is all the more necessary today that adult protection/busing be provided.

Today's moms, most of them, work outside the home, voiding their ability to show up at the beginning and the end of school days. Therefore, kids are always going to be at risk as they are held hostage in one crusade for fresh tax money after the other.

It will stop only when state law mandates otherwise.

Couples don't need two incomes and they don't need government baby-sitting services

All-day kindergarten is a gift to parents who want baby sitters and to teachers who want more work. It's a feel-good, government-paid, baby-sitting, make-more-government-work project, compliments of Newark property owners.

That's been my thesis all along, most recently in this journal at this link.

A reader of that journal entry asked: "For parents who support this (all-day kindergarten) because they 'must' work full time outside of the home what is your response?"

For the one or two other persons who might care what I think about that, here it is:

First, there are few, if any, couples that must have two incomes. The reason I know this is because my wife and I made it with me working outside the home while she worked inside. I never had great paydays, and some months during those years we never had any paydays, but we spent only what we could afford and kept our appetites under control. Nevertheless, we raised three babies to adulthood. If we did it - being no more blessed with brains than anyone else - any couple can do it.

Second, even if both parents think they must work (because they will not control their appetites) it is their own responsibility to pay for baby-sitting services, not their fellow citizen-taxpayers.

And third, the kind of education a small child needs is not from teachers and books. It is not from strangers. It is not from society. It is from home and family.

The expectations by the state for little children to perform at at a government-set level is pure crap. It is artificial crap manufactured by bureaucrats and teachers for the greater glory and make-work of bureaucrats and teachers.

My own education began with first grade at age six. Except for the increasing interference by government upon my life - and the associated costs thereto - I haven't done badly.

Parents apparently at fault in tragic shooting incident

The Columbus Dispatch told in detail on 7/15/07 what happened when a few Worthington high schoolers when out to harass Allen S. Davis, a recluse, and his mother, and about events leading up to one of the youngsters getting shot in the head.

Davis was sentenced to 19 years and the youngster was sentenced to lots of medical procedures and will maybe never fully recover. It's a tragedy resulting from foolish behavior on both sides.

I am pleasantly surprised that many who commented on it in the letters column were sympathetic with Davis, this nobody who, however wrongfully, tried to end the years of bedevilment he'd received from kids trespassing on his property. Most of the time, or so it seems to me, a guy like him is just a schmuck who is used as a whipping boy by grieving family members with help from over-zealous and too-accommodating courts, as may be the case here.

According to the Dispatch report, the parents knew what their kids were going to do, and - by the way the article was written - it seemed that they were okay with this "sport." After all, they had done similar things when they were young.

Now these parents and the child-victim remain unforgiving of Davis, though he did say he was sorry. But no place in this extensive report did I read that these parents regretted their foolishness for letting their child participate in this activity, nor were they the least apologetic to the recluse, the other victim.

Were they honorable enough to shoulder some the blame, perhaps other parents might prevent their kids from harassing people who've done them no harm.

Kindergarten: Government's all-day baby sitting service

With the implementation of all-day kindergarten, the responsibilities of motherhood hit a new low, school employees are are blessed with more government-designed make-work, and tax payers start bankrolling an all-day baby-sitting service.

The only losers are the little kids being trucked off to spend more time in the care of strangers when they should be home playing.

The plan fits well with the description given to government-induced education 3/20/07 when I wrote that school tax money is Ohio's big breast.

Boy abused for 4 years: Where were his parents?

There is a boy in Licking County who was abused, it is charged, more than 200 times over a period of four years, beginning when he was 10.

A Plain City man, David Arthur Meadows, has been charged, according to The Advocate's news report.

Likely he'll get jail time. But just as likely, the cooperators, the other perpetrators, will escape blame or punishment.

Society and the law should ask: How could even one such incidence occur without the knowledge and intervention of this boy's parents or guardian?

They are a root cause of all such recurring incidents. Without parents, guardians, relatives, neighbors who care, there is just a kid by himself against a pervert.

How can these "parents" not be held legally - not just morally - guilty of rape and perversion?

Cowles' supporters crowd appeals courtroom

The courtroom for the Fifth Appellate District court was packed this morning with supporters of Tom Cowles and his family as the three-judge panel heard arguments about the fairness of state bureaucrats in their revocation of Tom's license to operate a child care center.

The packed courtroom was a victory for Tom and it clearly demonstrated to the judges exactly how the community feels about the matter. Surely they will not be able to ignore such an overwhelming statement.

The judges will mail their decision to the parties involved.

You are invited to Cowles' court appeal

The validity of local justice will be tested tomorrow (5/10/07) when the case of Tom Cowles is heard in the Fifth Appellate District court at 9 a.m.

Cowles is appealing a decision by Licking County Common Pleas Judge Thomas Marcelain in October 2006 that upheld charges by the state that Cowles' operation of the Playmate preschool was, in effect, unsafe and unsanitary.

The story of that case, and a bit of background was nicely written by Lori Wince for the Dispatch's ThisWeek section on May 6, 2007.

If you are not already familiar with the Newark Tea Party gallery devoted to Tom and his incredible devotion to the education and well-being of the children he serves, you should go read it. Tom has spent decades and a fortune in the creation of this facility, a unique-in-all-this-world tool for the education and care of little kids.

Your presence in the courtroom - on the main floor of the Licking County Courthouse - is not only welcome, but would be appreciated by Tom and his family.

Enough about well-being of homosexuals; it's time to support masturbators

With all the homosexual love being spotlighted in the homo-oriented mass media, it's no surprise that the local Gannett paper would announce with a straight face on Page One that children at Newark High School have formed what they call a "Gay Straight Alliance."

What was surprising is that this is smiled upon by the school, and that a school principal is the advisor. He was quoted as saying "The Number One goal is a support system for kids."

That doesn't give me any sort of warm feeling for the Newark school system which is a major consumer of my tax money. I'm guessing that other taxpayers - mostly parents - may get sizzling hot over the idea, and not in the queer sense of the word.

We'll see.

In the meantime I hereby call upon Newark Schools to begin another support group, this one for masturbators.

I'm sure that there are many more masturbators at Newark Schools than there are homosexuals, and God knows masturbators need all the support they can get because they're getting none at all.

They too could have their own meetings in school facilities and talk about issues connected with masturbation.

Perhaps this same principal - Jesse Truett - would be available to advise the Masturbators Club because he said he will "support all our students, no matter who they are." He said he hopes his homosexual group of children "will become just another part of the Newark High School's landscape." He justified his commitment to this cause, in part, by saying "it's not unusual, and it's not strange."

Maybe not to him. But it sure as hell is to me and a lot of other taxpayers, and don't get me started on how the parents of these children must feel. But strange or not, I can almost guarantee that masturbation is a lot less unusual and a lot less strange and anyway it's long past time when masturbators came out of the closet. It's long past time when they got their own local headlines and a lot more media attention in general.

Masturbators have had neither national nor local recognition; they've never had tax dollars allocated to them (not even so much as the services of high school principal advisor or the use of school facilities), never had television shows devoted to their preferences, never had their own trips and club activities as is the hope of the children in this Gay Straight Alliance at NHS.

Masturbators, arise! Come, open the closet door and demand equality. Yours may be the last sexual activity yet to win media admiration, public reassurance and government support.

The Magic Nanny will save your kids

Rest easy, parent. The U.S. Attorney General will speak today in Cincinnati about how best to protect your children when they connect to the internet.

The Magic Nanny rides again.

This is a very difficult matter. Of course we need government to save us.

Or we could log on to ProtectKids.com where you'll be taught to teach your kids about predators, find and install protective software, and most of all just to know what your kids are doing and supervise them as you should anyway.

There are many similar educational sites, lots of software, and tons of advice. It's all there for any parent who cares enough to do his or her job.

But there will always be parents who want the government to do it for them. Without folks like that the Magic Nanny wouldn't survive.

Ask not what your school district can do for you ...

WCLT's report on the considerations for switching Newark students from one school to the other demonstrates to my satisfaction one of the problems with community support and harmony between students, parents, and schools.

In the words of Superintendent Keith Richards, from a WCLT report: "We had all of Ben Franklin going to Wilson next year. We need a substantial portion of Ben Franklin to go to Heritage School next year and not to Wilson. That almost by itself balances out the middle schools. The elementary, we had too few a students planning to go to Cherry Valley, too many going to the new Legend school and about the ‘right number going to Miller, but if you take some away from Miller and put them at Cherry Valley, you have to make some adjustments. There is a change between Cherry Valley, Miller and Legend Elementary."

I grew up in an old-time small school district. The kids I entered first grade with were pretty much the same students I graduated with 12 years later. Parents almost universally supported the schools because teachers were close to families and the school system was the center of community affairs.

Modern methods of operating schools have changed all that. It's an impersonal matter now, machine-like and bureaucratic to the core. That is precisely why the community at large no longer feels responsible for them.

In the good old days: What privacy?

In the good old days all we worried about was Big Brother government watching us, wrote Maria Puente for USA Today But now, she said, we have to contend with folks who are using camera phones.

The problem is that these folks upload to the Internet visual records of just anyone's irresponsible moments. "Here in YouTube world, whether you're a celebrity or a nobody, privacy can be a disappearing luxury, thanks to the technology in every pocket. ... In the old days, kids would go on spring break, get drunk, take off their clothes, and few people would know. Now those kinds of pictures flicker 24/7 on the Internet ..."

But this is where USA Today and Maria need to be reminded that "the old days" is a relative term. In my "old days" - in small-town Ohio - there were no spring breaks where parents would finance their college kids' drunken irresponsibility in some far-off state.

That didn't stop drunken irresponsibility, of course. The difference is that most people didn't make damned fools of themselves in public. Most did it in private.

In the old days parents were watching their kids. So were the neighbors. So were the old people who hung out at the post office. Do it in public and everyone who populated your part of the world knew - and they let you know they knew. This is privacy?

That's exactly why, in the old days, public displays of annoying behavior weren't common, as they are today. For those of us who desperately want to - but can't - ignore people pushing their insipidity in our faces, this new technology, cell phones in particular, is a good thing. It may inspire them to perform behind locked doors, as in the good old days.