APS "Gangbangers"; one - APS Board of Education; zero

The game; the authority of adults over children in schools.

The ball; sagging.

Sagging is wearing pants low enough to deliberately
expose underwear.

As a teacher, I attended at least two meetings
between the staff at Hoover MS and members of
law enforcement "gang" units.

The police officers were unswerving in their conviction
that students should not be allowed to sag at school;
as it is so closely associated with gang membership
and generally unacceptable conduct.

It is, in some respects, the equivalent of the unrest
in schools in the 1960s, when students were just
starting to wear their hair long, and adults were
trying to stop them.

The will of students prevailed in both cases.

I felt at the time, that sagging was not a hill that
I was willing to die on, but it wasn't my call.

In a quarter of a century of teaching, my teaching was
never interrupted by sagging, per se.

It was interrupted more times than you can imagine
by students who didn't think that they had to obey rules.

The issue is not sagging.

The issue is, permitting prohibited behavior.

That said, it was board policy, and it was expressly stated
in the Student Behavior Handbook, that students
were not allowed to sag. The policy was clear,
the wording was unequivocal, the word "sagging" was used.

It then became the obligation of adults to enforce the rule.

To do anything else, reinforced the notion that
students don't have to obey adults at school.

The permission of prohibited behavior undermines, fatally,
the authority of adults over children.
One cannot let a child disobey rules in any situation,
if they expect to enforce the rules in any other situation.

Writing policies that are not enforced, is the end result of
writing policies that are not founded in principle.

If a child asks; "Why can't we sag?" and all the adult has is;
"Because I said so.", enforcement becomes exponentially
more problematic.

If on the other hand,
there is a shared and expressed philosophy on sagging,
the dynamic is changed considerably.

"Why can't we sag"
"Because it is the shared consensus of adults that sagging
promotes an atmosphere that is threatening to most other
students and is educationally inefficient."

"And while you may not agree with us, that is the policy
and we will enforce it."

APS has no discipline philosophy. Not on their website,
not in the Student Behavior Handbook, not in Board Policy.

And that is why we end up with policies written by
a handful of board members or senior administrators
who have a bug up their ass about long hair,
or about sagging.

A policy that is not enforced, has the end result of
teaching students that they have a choice in which rules
they will obey and which they will resist.

Sagging is no longer mentioned in the Student Behavior Handbook.

It was removed "secretly".

By which I mean, no real effort was made to involve or inform
stakeholders. I write that, based on the assumption that as
a more than averagely involved stakeholder, the change
comes as a surprise to me.

All of which stands in diametric opposition to
the leadership's supposed commitment to communicate
with stakeholders, and involve them meaningfully
in decisions that affect their interests.

Another empty promise made my the leadership of the APS.

Another story that "education reporter" Zsombor Peter
will not write by his own deliberate decision;

• The fact that students have prevailed, on the issue of
  sagging; that they are in fact, in charge at school, and

• the fact that APS has no discipline philosophy,
  written or other wise, to serve as a foundation for
  its many discipline policies, and

• the fact that the leadership of the APS routinely
  violates its own codes of conduct,

• and its repeatedly expressed commitments to
  communicate honestly with stakeholders,

• because he believes that the story is un-newsworthy, and

• because he believes that he has no personal or professional obligation to inform stakeholders, or

• because he is afraid to write a story that is critical of very powerful and influential people that run the APS, or

• because he is deliberately covering up the incompetence and corruption in the leadership of the APS.

or for some other reason that I cannot imagine,
and he is yet to express.



cc Zsombor Peter upon posting