Posted by Your Fellow GCG Reader on November 15, 2017, 11:17 pm, in reply to "District 9"
Hello everyone who participates on this discussion board.
Please let me start off by saying I am an occasional casual reader of the site. I am not on social media. Nearly all of my news comes from ‘legitimate’ (I use that word loosely) news sites and I do my best to keep them balanced - think POTUS on satellite radio. That being said, I did catch wind of this whole debacle via the Belleville News Democrat and KSDK. I am also generally a passive reader, I do not interject myself into opinion pieces because they are exactly that. I am, however, bewildered at how responsibility for this bout lies entirely with the school district, so I really am compelled to interject my two cents. I feel that those wholly blaming the school district are taking the easy way out, not addressing the larger problem at hand. I wrote a long diatribe about society problems as a whole and misplaced hatred but resisted posting that as it was largely opinion based. I condensed it down to two facts….
FERPA. This is a family and student’s right to privacy. For this point, let us assume the victim and their family is referred to as FAMILY A and one of the attackers is PERSON B. FAMILY A has no way of knowing what specific action was taken against PERSON B leading up to the fight. That being said, those who ‘know’ what actions were taken are either basing their ‘facts’ on a dishonest individual violating terms or are hearing it second, third, fourth, or more hand. We know how the Telephone game works.
Senate Bill 100. Zero tolerance was eliminated over two years ago. There are much more stringent guidelines for suspension and could very well be the reason they did not hang these ‘thugs’ out in front with a noose. Those who are claiming zero tolerance is a joke or that it is loosely enforced are misinformed and wrong.
So, I hope we can agree on three things – you are getting a biased story pretty much no matter who or where you get it from. A school district can in no way make an official statement about anything beyond ‘it was handled’ because specificities would be a legal nightmare. And sometimes red tape can interfere with making what may seem like a logical move - everyone has rights, including perceived bullies.
I would love to go into more detail about armchair quarterbacks, lack of home structure, the victim mentality, etc. but that would be delving too far into my opinion and I really just want to stimulate a little discussion around those two items and how they could play into it.
on November 15, 2017, 11:17 pm, in reply to "