APS scoffrule "Sagger" off to prison.

A few years ago, I was a teacher at Hoover Middle School.
I was central to a long running battle over the fact that the
administration was permitting prohibited behavior.

The rule in question prohibited "sagging"; the wearing of pants
so low as to expose underwear. At the time it was not only
prohibited by school rules, but by School Board Policy.

My position was, and still is, you have to enforce rules.
If you don't, you teach children to ignore rules.
I found the sagging issue particularly important because
sagging is overt, in your face, disregard for the rules.

This is not about sagging. Sagging was not a hill I was ready
to die on. But the "leadership" of the APS made the rule, and
I believed that because it was a rule, it should be enforced.

So one day, I went around school with a camera and took
pictures of the kids who were sagging; incontrovertible proof
that prohibited behavior was being permitted by the
administration. I even took a picture of the assistant principal
standing in the hallway with his arms folded in front of him,
watching dozens of kids breaking the rules without consequence.

I was fired for "creating a hostile environment" for the principal
and assistant principal. The firing was reversed in the first
impartial hearing outside of the APS administrative system.
But that is a whole other story, and not the point of this post.

One of the students I photographed that day, a kid so cocky
in his disregard for the rule that he posed for the picture with
his shirt up to highlight the sagging, has just been sent to
prison for six years.

Apparently, he and a few of his friends thought it would be
amusing to beat the crap out of someone they didn't even know,
and then light him on fire, link.

I can't say that if this kid had been pulled up short as an 8th
grader, that he wouldn't have gone on in life to do what he did,
but the supposition is not all that outlandish.

If the leadership of the APS supported character education in
the least, life would be different, and better, for a number of
students, both in school and after graduation.

The leadership of the APS has dropped the ball on character
education and student discipline.

One of the greatest obstacles to education is the lack of student
discipline. Yet the leadership of the APS steadfastly refuses to
step up on the issue. They have not even invested the time and
effort necessary even to pen a discipline philosophy;
the critical foundation for any and all discipline policies.

Kids are still sagging on every campus in the APS. A rule was
made, the students said "you can't tell us what to do", and they
do whatever they want.

Who is in charge in schools; adults or children?
Who is in charge, the people who make the rules, or the kids
who ignore them?

Kids are in charge in the APS.

The leadership of the APS bears some responsibility for the
assault and near murder of an innocent.

Who knows how this young man's life would have turned out
if we had provided him the character education he was promised.


Not that they will admit it, or
recognize it, or
do anything about it.




photo Mark Bralley