Federal Program Supplies Surplus Military Gear to Schools - WSJ
US school districts given free machine guns and grenade launchers | World news | theguardian.com
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Symptom. Not the problem.
Will New Zealand take me?
Snowden said the NSA heavily monitored NZ. I have no idea why - we expecting a hobbit invasion?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan
Okay...I'm feeling more ignorant by the day. I didn't know school districts had police forces.......and I'm a teacher.
But I suppose it is only a reflection of the constant beat of the war drums and the raving paranoia of modern America.
they don't have police forces. school resource officers answer to their local PDs.
some large urban districts have "security officers" but they are -- at least in the urban district where I worked -- unarmed.
having military grade weapons is insane
It's not the hobbits they're worried about. It's the Orcs, though their numbers were decimated when Sauron met his end when the One Ring fell into the fires of Mount Doom with Smeagol. They're really no longer a threat, but those damn wizards can be trouble. Gandalf the Grey, Radagast the Brown, etc. Troublemakers, all of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by velobran
Were I a school administrator I'd be trying my best to use this program to fund school supplies. What can I get for a gently used MRAP and how many books will that buy me?
I think there is less chance of this stuff being deployed on the General public if it stays in the hands of the LAUSD thAn if it was to find its way to the LASD
The guy I just flew with told me he and his wife organized an event to help fund supplies for art class after the teacher told him she buys art supplies out of her own paycheck. Incredible.
The event raised a few hundred dollars and that was enough for basically 2nd grade art class to have some stuff to help children with their creative sides. This guy is no softy or charity case and he's only 28 years old but has a few kids and he is just blown away that his 7-year old daughter's teacher is buying supplies out of her own paycheck. Without getting too partisan political I tried to get him to at least think about how he votes when considering these issues. That's another story for another day and not here but the whole story was eye opening.
This nation is crazy. The best and the worst comes out of these borders.
The school district in the town where I used to live (southwestern NH) couldn't raise taxes to fix the high school gym roof, which was leaking and made the gym unusable on rainy days. We're talking chump change here per taxpayer. But, you know, TAXES and all.
But when the initiative arose to hire a "resource officer" (which was far, far more expensive to fund) for the same high school, it won overwhelmingly (I think this town's full time police force stands between 3 and 4).
By the way, southwestern NH must be one of the most peaceful places on the planet.
I don't know if the roof got fixed.
oh, I meant to mention. In terms of militarizing/police-ifying schools, you'd think we'd learn something from DARE, but apparently not.
Effectiveness of DARE
Karen and I and a bunch of her friends fund a little art scholarship at one of the local high schools. We like picking some kid that works hard, has a lot of talent and their expression will never get Hallmark Cards calling them up. Maybe I'll just donate to an elementary school program or something. It's actually one of the most fun things I do.
as someone who makes a living selling 'security' to people afraid of their own shadows, the militarization of schools and the police scares the shit out of me.
I'm envisioning an awesome sequel to Breaking Bad in which an unknown vice principle somewhere becomes an international black market arms dealer in order to buy paint brushes and trumpets for his school, all while wearing a bow tie.Quote:
Originally Posted by zetroc
There are countless stories of teachers using their own money to buy "school supplies" and it is usually the teachers that are making the lowest and work in the poorest districts(read: they love the kids and love teaching). We made the choice to move to a top 10 school district - pay over $9,000 in taxes and yet still get hit up at the start of the year for school suppliers (markers, crayons, glue, bleach wipes, hand sanitizer etc... - comes with at shopping list at Staples - cost is ~$40/kid (I have two). We also get the constant pleas to buy books, raffles, bake sales etc...... All that being said the towns people have passed the every tax increase requested for school budgets for the past 25 years - 5 new elementary schools and they are starting on a new high school ($100M) - even the older folks support these increases- I suspect it is to keep the property values high and not out of the goodness for the next generation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Saab2000
In Britain they do a scheme to teach kids about commerce they get 10 quid and at the end of the term see how much they have managed to grow a business, some invariably fail some do ok some turn it into a 43k illegal sunstance supply ring
No telling what they'll do if the teachers keep shooting themselves around here.
Sadly..probably not. My wife and I actually tried back around 1990. Like you...we had tangible skills, etc.. to offer...but got the big No Thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan
So... I'm a school district administrator. And, in fact, today I am wearing a bowtie. As much as I'd probably enjoy channeling my inner Regan and moving some arms to get what I want done, we are fortunately free of having our own officers, let alone any armament. But I do enjoy seeing some of our city's finest with their armored vests over their shirts and wearing web belts. In a city with 8 murders in the entire history of the city... Which is part of the point I was brief about earlier.
One quick note about the budget and buying supplies. School funding is crazy sauce. In the past 20 or so years (honestly, longer, as the funding mess kind of started with the ESEA) under the guise of accountability the budget allocation has been increasingly categorized. Title 1, Title 3, DAIT, ERA, SLIPP, and on and on and on... The idea was sound, make sure that if we are allocating additional money that it will be going for the purpose that was intended. The practice has been much worse, where art and music programs don't get a category, effectively must be general funded, and the general fund is always running dry even when the categoricals are overflowing. It winds up with the situation where your district or school can have lots of money and still not be able to pay for things and it's all honestly the truth. It gets even worse than that--sometimes the money doesn't show up. This happened much more frequently 2007-2012, but for us just this week $500k of programmatic state funding was scheduled to arrive and didn't. We don't yet know why. You might be surprised to find out just how frequently the money just disappears after being promised during the budgeting phase. So you've started the program, and there are students in it, so you need to keep it running, but the categorical just disappeared so... out of the general fund again.
I don't have first hand knowledge of what LAUSD's budget looks like, but I'll bet that there was a homeland security grant that had to be spent on school security and couple that with the program of sending decommissioned military gear to local peace officers for free or cheap and there very well may have been a situation created where the *only* thing they could buy was grenade launchers and an armored truck. And that's really the insidious part of the industrial-military complex we have going on here--that the production is guaranteed whether we need it or not (because jobs herp derp), and then more money is allocated to shuffle all of this armament around because it needs to go somewhere... That's the problem, and that LAUSD is holding the bag is the symptom.