INGLEWOOD, California (AP) — A principal trying to prevent walkouts during immigration rallies inadvertently introduced a lockdown so strict that children weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom, and instead had to use buckets in the classroom, an official said.
Worthington Elementary School Principal Angie Marquez imposed the lockdown March 27 as nearly 40,000 students across Southern California left classes to attend immigrants’ rights demonstrations.
Marquez apparently misread the district handbook and ordered a lockdown designed for nuclear attacks.
Tim Brown, the district’s director of operations, confirmed some students used buckets but said the principal’s order to impose the most severe type of lockdown was an “honest mistake.”
OK, I give up. When do we cross the line from “honest mistake” to “stupid mistake”? If making kids use buckets for toilets is not a stupid mistake, just what would officials regard as a stupid mistake?
The principal “followed procedure. She made a decision to follow the handbook. She just misread it.”
Oh this is lovely logic. Your children are in great hands.
One of the best parts about this blog, John, is your uncanny ability to find just the right illustration to put with each article. I suspect your skills for visual object searches may be some of the best on the internet.
I’ve tried to trace some back to the source and seldom can find the orginals. I could find this one by typing in the misspelled word, but doubt that was the original search phrase you used; unless your ability to remember details of every image you’ve seen is unreal.
John, this is just another in a long series of articles you have posted that points out school officials going to stupid, reactionary lengths, although how far it has gone boggles the mind.
This is the problem with America today, too much knee jerk reaction and not enough care given to exmine the best course to deal with situations. This is part of that “everything has changed since 9/11” philosphy I have written about. What I mean is that the President is a role model for America, however this role he plays is one of just doing something to look like you are doing something, no matter the results. That is the reason for Homeland Security blocking innocent Americans from going on plane flights with the failure that is the no-fly-list. It is the reason that the administration has recieved “F”s for the past two years from the 9/11 commission members, it is the reasoon we are mired in a war we didn’t need to be in and may enter another, and it trickles down from there until your kids are crapping in buckets.
I would have suspended the students that left, probably enough to make them repeat the grade. That would have been a lesson in freedom and responsibility. You have the freedom but you must accept responsibility and the consequences thereof.
Minor children aren’t free to just skip school to attend a demonstration anyway. This should be covered under existing truancy laws.
Of course the liberal leaning education establishment must be tickled pink to see all these children, who haven’t a clue except what their “teacher” told them, protesting and demonstrating for whatever the cause of the day is. Until they’ve successfully lived in the “real world” for a few years, I wish high school, and college, students would just shut the f*ck up.
“This should be covered under existing truancy laws.”
True, just think what would have happened if one of them had gotten hurt or killed going to and from the demonstration.
People used pots long before inside plumbing was available. Consider it a history lesson. The problem with school administrators is that performance is demanded without any room for leeway or original thought. Everyone is paralyzed over the fear of litigation. These simple decisions can be career enders. People, being people, often panic and make less the optimal decisions. You have to remember when hard decisions are to be made, many times the ones getting paid to make them are, “out of reach”.
#1 & 2: FYI, this item wasn’t posted by John. All of us contributing editors have our own way of finding interesting photos for the posts just as the articles themselves. And we all are are disgusted by what’s happening in the schools because teaching kids stupid things leads to stupid adults and as a lot of other stories we post shows, there are more than enough of those.
Sorry Uncle Dave. Props on all your work. Theres not much around, or I may have missed it, to alert me to your work. Keep it up!!! This is now my favorite destination on the web and I am gaining converts to this site everyday!
Guess the teachers should be glad they didn’t learn another of those old sayings…..*kick the bucket*……that would have been fun.
I get really torn as to who to be outraged at in these situations these days……the morons who come up with the plans or the lemmings that blindly follow the plans over the cliff without any questions.
Even if this person mistakenly exercised the “post nuclear downloading option” this was a not great example of policy formulation. Reverting to “Groovers” would not add more control to any emergency situation until the actual point that plumbing and waste disposal systems stopped working. Groovers are containers (ammo boxes, buckets) lined with plastic bags. Hopefully, there were bags were in the plan. The name comes from the mark they leave just where you would expect. Anyway, making bathroom facilities off limits too soon would just exacerbate problems.
Normally I consider myself a non-expert on most subjects that pass through this blog. However, in this case being a disaster planner and having needed to use a restroom in the past, I feel safe in saying this wasn’t the BMW of response plans. When a handful of authority figures reach a point that they think there is a need to maintain order over five hundred other people, regardless of their age, job one is letting them know you are there to help. Their approach, with even children, would end up in a true emergency with Principal Hardball’s head being dunked into one of the toilets.
Did these folks miss the 200 hours of media coverage of the mood in the New Orleans Dome after Katrina? On the Barney Bullet Scale of one to ten bullets for inappropriate response, this one gets four bullets.
#1 and #2 — If you look at the top of each post you will see who posted it. In this case, you will see that I did (KB).
For a list of the contributing editors, see the masthead:
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/misc/masthead.html
Thanks.
People used pots long before inside plumbing was available. Consider it a history lesson.
And that is one reason they lived to an average age of 40 years. Disease and infections through unsanitary conditions took a large toll of people in the large, congested cities.
Re: 7 come 11. Holy sh*t* (think Irish). John is just a media aggrigator? And the troops are getting restless for cedit it appears.
All this time I was giving John props for totally doing the majority of the content and wondering how he found the time for any other life.]. Now that I realize (belatedly perhaps) that it is actually a team of intellectual ninjas, and John is skimming the implied credit that goes with a name on the masthead, I am shocked, I tell you, Shocked!!
Call me an oblivious twit (old style) but I really thought J.C.D. was doing the majority of the entires and picking fag ends off the street of opportunity now and then. So to speak.
So do all of you ninjas have to take cranky leasons to be able to post to your special areas? It’s odd to find a so many contributors managing to hold, essentially, a single voice in terms of style.
PS: A lead line that says “Filed under general – KB@ doesn’t give you all as much implied credit as you may assume. I don’t know a single old print journalist who would settle for such a non-descript byline.
Hey, this team does a much better job than I could ever do alone. Plus I find most of their discoveries to often be stuff I WISHED I had found.
Team blogging works! You’re lucky these guys are this good. Enjoy.
4. I get the impression that truancy laws arent much enforced. I hear of parents having their kids skip school for all sorts of reasons – like vacations or whatever during the school year – which would NEVER have gotten us out of school when I was a kid. sends the message that other things are more important than their education.
We have this problem where I live. The school district doesn’t know what to do when it happens again. When I was that age I didn’t tell them what to do.
http://www.news14charlotte.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=118055
Talk about being Wimpy. Like I said before suspend them so they have repeat the grade or expel them. But you see they can’t here because they have to provide an alternative school in which they lose the state money and have to pay for the alternative school.
Makes you wonder who is really running the schools.
Just keep in mind these people will be running our government when we are old. It may make you want to take up smoking so don’t have to find out what it will be like.
It’s the Feds who tell the states what to do and provides a large chunk of the funding. Schools need to be allowed to be run by more local goverment.