"The vast majority of parents (82%)

believe their children are safe at school, according to results from the district’s Quality of Education survey." link
a comforting result?

if you spin the results anticlockwise, now one parent in five believes that their child is not safe at school. instead of a seemingly comforting survey result; the problem seems worthy of attention.

there are other problems than the spin.

one immediate problem is that the survey was taken and compiled by those who are "accountable" for the results. there is a conflict of interest.

but, even if the numbers are valid; the results are a deception; a red herring. there is no corelation between actual school safety and parents impressions of school safety.

a more honest measure would be a survey of students; to see how safe they felt at school. if there are such results, they were not included in the report.

further; an overwhelming majority of parents have no idea whether their child is safe at school or not. how would they know? the district doesn't tell them the truth about the dangers their children face at school.

there was a year when I was part of the union's negotiating team. we carried a proposal to the table; to include as part of the teacher's contract, that teachers have a right to know the truth about what goes on at their school; fights, drugs, weapons, vandalism, etc.
by extension, the community has a right to know the truth about what goes on in their public schools as well.

the district denied the proposal and stakeholders right to know the truth.

in a private meeting with then supt. peter horoshak, he told me, "you can't just tell the truth, you don't know how someone might want to use it."

tom savage, now second in command in the district, said during those same negotiations, "if I told the truth about what happens at my school (ahs), the realtors in my neighborhood would have my neck."

the point is that the district, as a matter of course, does not respect the right of stakeholders to know the truth about their interests in the public schools. they will spin and manipulate the truth to suit their own ends.

when parents fill in surveys and report that schools are safe, they are telling the truth. but their confidence is unjustified; it is based on deliberately manipulated truth.

have you ever seen a school parent newsletter that routinely reports violence, drugs, weapons, and chronic disruptions at a school? doesn't the community have a right to that knowledge?

if a parent is deciding whether or not to walk their child to school; or they are deciding whether to send their child to a private, public, or a charter school; don't they have a right to make their decision based on the whole truth?

how do you allocate resources to secret problems?

I remember sitting in an src meeting when the principal, wayne knight, asked us to reappropriate limited staff resources to deal with a problem of "smoking" in the girl's bathroom.

after some discussion, it was concluded that while smoking in the girl's bathroom was problematic; it did not justify reappropriating duty staff.

only then did he admit that it was marijuana being smoked in the restroom, not 75 feet from his office.

his need was to solve a problem, without letting anybody know that there was a problem.

district wide, this is not unusual behavior.

the leadership of the aps will not hold themselves accountable to a standard of conduct which requires them to tell the truth;

...for a reason.