Friday, May 12, 2006
Burglaries Rise After New Schools Open
The article below discusses how a normally peaceful neighborhood has been hit by a rash of burglaries since two new schools opened. All the break ins occurred during school hours. This reinforces my long held aversion towards living near middle or high schools. A friend of mine, a vice-principal of a Bay Area school, even told me about students who would ditch school to break into homes so that they could raise the cash necessary to buy pot. (After the students were caught, their parents held the school responsible, and caused the school no small amount of trouble.) I have to admit that this principal certainly came up with good spin. From the SF Chronic: If school's in session, so is crime: "Eric DeMeulenaere, the principal at Community High School, basically tossed gasoline on the fire when he sent neighborhood residents an e-mail suggesting the kids walking through the neighborhood could be members of the schools' volunteer programs doing good deeds in the community. "
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2 comments:
OK, I got lost in this story. The school set up new smaller schools because the big high schools couldn't handle the kids. Now we have the smaller schools not being able to handle their kids. What has change by this new smaller model compus?
I think the principal gives us an indication of part of the problem when the term 'my kids' is used. These aren't Eric DeMeulenaere's kids. These aren't his kids they're his students. Eric needs to distance himself from his charges and maybe not let kids who sneak off campus get away with it.
Principal Eric might well be of the school of thought that kids will be kids, and kids as part their growing and learning experience, are expected to break into houses, steal cars, shoplift, and experiment with drugs.
Smaller model campus shows the school district is doing something. Sort of like the days when they used to combine all the schools into the huge, mega schools, and even grade schools put all their classes into huge wall-less classrooms taught by harried teaching teams. The most dependable indicator to gauge whether a student will fail or succeed, let alone learn anything, is the level of participation the students parents show in their child's education. I notice there is no attempt to measure this or publish public reports.
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