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Telegram: After a brief evacuation prompted by a bomb threat at North High School Tuesday morning, police stuck around to break up a couple of fights that broke out among students re-entering the building. 

Robert F. Pezzella, Worcester public schools safety liaison, said students were evacuated around 10:15 a.m. when a male caller phoned the school and claimed a bomb was inside. Students were allowed to return to the building around noon after Worcester police swept the building and determined there was no threat to safety. Approximately 1,200 students with staff waited outside in the cold for the bomb threat assessment to finish.

Then about 12:30 p.m., police had to break up fights between a few small groups of students. Mr. Pezzella confirmed at 1 p.m. that three students were arrested and taken away in handcuffs. The students were reportedly all under 18 and were involved in two separate incidents. Mr. Pezzella said a male student was arrested for charges related to one fight. In another altercation between two young women, both were arrested. One teenager is being charged with assault and battery and disruption of school assembly; the other will be charged with disruption of school assembly.

How come every time I look at the Telegram someone from North High is calling in a bomb threat? I haven’t been keeping track, but I feel like this has happened at least 3,000 times this year. So are kids just doing this to get out of math quizzes at this point?

My take on this revolves around one simple concept – this is what you get when as a society you don’t have punishments or consequences for anything. It’s not just schools, it’s everywhere. You’ve seen it for the last two months with the hippies protesting anything and everything and violating the law while doing it. The entire premise of their protests is that black people are being killed WHILE they are breaking the law. Thus the issue no longer is, “why are people breaking the law so much, and what are we gonna do about it?” Instead the issue is, “why aren’t we doing more for and being nicer to people that are breaking the law?”

When they find out who did this they should be expelled immediately. No alternative schools, no programs, nothing. I can already hear people whining – “But Turtleboy, what are these kids gonna do if you force them out of school?” Not my problem. You live in America. You get a free education and tons of social services at your disposal. You wanna start calling in bomb threats? You lose that right. Why shouldn’t they? I don’t care if it’s a kid. They committed an adult crime. Clearly whatever the punishment is now isn’t stopping kids from doing this. Make the punishment stronger and kids will think twice before doing it. Or they won’t. I really don’t care. Just get them out of schools so that normal kids can learn.

First of all, before I go any further I wanna stop and point out what amazing people Worcester Public School teachers are. The same way that cops have come under attack lately, teachers have been under attack for just as long, if not longer. And they’re being attacked by the same people – assholes who have no understanding of what it’s like to live in the inner-city. Suits in far off distant places who make their jobs impossible. These teachers at North have to get all 1,200 of these students to pass the MCAS and graduate in four years. If they don’t, it’s not on Mom or Dad or Junior. Nope, it’s on the teachers. They failed the students, not the other way around.

So of course the new thing now is that schools have to keep scumbag kids in school no matter what. Governor Deval Patrick signed this Chapter 222 in 2012 which required schools to do the following:

• All public schools, including charter schools, must comply and revise their policies to assure that exclusion is a last resort and that alternatives to exclusion are tried first.
• Students who face school exclusion are entitled to full due process rights, including parental involvement and accommodation for students with limited English proficiency
• During both short-term and long-term exclusions, students have the right to make academic progress.
• During long-term exclusions, students must be provided alternative education services.
• Except for very serious offenses, students may not be excluded for more than 90 school days.
• Schools must review their school exclusion data and increase their reporting to DESE.
• DESE must post annual state-wide exclusion data each fall.
• DESE must analyze the annual exclusion data and follow-up when the numbers are high and when there are significant disparities by race and for students with disabilities.

Ya see that right there? That’s why kids are calling in bomb threats to North High. That’s why 1,200 kids had to wait in the freezing cold in the middle of January for over two hours. That’s why teachers lost yet another critical day to get these kids to learn what they need to learn to pass the state test so that a politician can point to a graph in November and say he fixed education. That’s why the cops had to arrest multiple kids for getting into fights during this unnecessary distraction of an event. Because of dumbass movements like this:

Because NOTHING is the kid’s fault. Governor Patrick, whose entire understanding of public schools comes from watching Dangerous Minds in 1995, told schools they were disciplining kids too hard. That bulleted list up above is a bill of rights for asshole kids. Those are the kids that are making it impossible for these nice kids to learn:

Those are the kids that are making it impossible for teachers to teach. No kid can get suspended for more than 90 days because of that – AKA no expulsion. Students facing suspension get “due process” rights, meaning schools can no longer just suspend kids. They all get lawyers is they want one, I shit you not.

The bottom line is the powers that be have decided that a significant amount of their time should be spent on making sure the worst behaved students’ rights aren’t violated. We’ve made sure that kids who attack YOUR kids, and kids who call in bomb threats, “have the right to make academic progress.” Kids who call in bomb threats. “must be provided alternative education services.” So basically instead of making sure these dooshnozzle, dingbat kids don’t fuck up schools for everyone else, we make sure they have more rights and get ADDITIONAL services that other kids are not. Makes sense.

This is above Deval Patrick’s head though – this one goes straight to the top. I’ll be the first to admit that I voted for Obama in 2008. I fell for it. Shit happens. But I worked in the private sector then and I work in the private sector now. Teachers who vote for Obama I don’t understand. He’s the one that did this to you. Well, him and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. This sums it up best right here:

According to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, black students without disabilities are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be suspended or expelled. 

“The widespread use of suspensions and expulsions has tremendous costs,” Mr. Duncan wrote in a letter to school officials. “Students who are suspended or expelled from school may be unsupervised during daytime hours and cannot benefit from great teaching, positive peer interactions and adult mentorship offered in class and in school.”

The Obama administration issued guidelines on Wednesday that recommended public school officials use law enforcement only as a last resort for disciplining students, a response to a rise in zero-tolerance policies that have disproportionately increased the number of arrests, suspensions and expulsions of minority students for even minor, nonviolent offenses.

Ya got that teachers and principals? The federal government just called you racist. Did you see what they did there? “Black students are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be suspended or expelled.” There’s only two possible conclusions you can reach with that – A) Schools are inherently racist, or B) Black kids are breaking the rules three times as much as white kids. One or the other. Not surprisingly they’re assuming it’s option A. And since schools are filled with racist principals and racist teachers, it’s up to the government to limit your ability to suspend kids who get in fights and call in bomb threats.

So yea, it’s not surprising then when a bunch of dingbats take over our highways and whine about racist police because not enough white people are getting shot by the cops. This is the message that’s being forced on us in schools – following procedure is a bad thing if people of color aren’t following the rules. Michael Brown tried to take a gun from a cop. According to the rules he gets shot. But you can’t do that because you’re racist. Same exact thing with schools. Kids call in bomb threats. According to zero-tolerance policies that kid gets expelled. But you can’t do that because then you’re a racist who is sentencing that kid to prison down the road. So instead you give him a slap on the wrist, a private tutor, and send him right back to his poor teachers in a day or two.

Makes sense.

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