Bullying fora begin

Two fora are scheduled, link, one tomorrow, Tuesday Sept 18 and another Thursday the 20th. The rules are simple;

The meetings will include work in small groups, where attendees will discuss identification of bullying situations and possible solutions.

Small groups means divide and conquer; allow no one to accumulate support for any position contrary to the position(s) board members and senior administrators support.

Noteworthy; the identification of "bullying situations" will not include a PowerPoint, or any other presentation, of student discipline in schools; likely the single most important "situation" affecting the incidence of bullying.

One might intuit, correctly, that schools with more discipline problems and greater numbers of chronically disruptive students have higher incidence of bullying. Yet those factors will be ignored in the search for solutions. One might wonder, why?

According to the Negotiated Agreement (Contract), link, p58, between teachers and the district,

The principal has the primary responsibility for administering the school’s disciplinary policy.

It follows that, at a school where student discipline is lacking, the responsibility falls first on the administration. The failure to create effective student discipline policies and procedures is an administrative failure. Statistics that signify discipline problems signify administrative failure.

Administrative failure, in particular at the district level, simply doesn't exist; at least not in any data the district compiles. There are only two possibilities for the lack of data, no problems, or no inclination to document problems. There are problems; ask any teacher; there is no inclination to document them.

I suspect Journal "education reporter" Hailey Heinz will attend at least one of the meetings. I suspect that her report will not point to Supt Winston Brooks' effort to be less than candid, forthright and honest with community members about student discipline, chronically disruptive students (including bullies) and the administrative and executive failures that enable them.

She, the Journal, has never reported on discipline in schools, despite that it is one of the most, if not the most important indicator of the likelihood of successfully educating students in any school or district.

The likelihood she/they will report on it now is the same as the likelihood she/they will investigate and report upon;

• the cover up of felony criminal misconduct by senior APS administrators in their publicly funded private police force, or
• the abdication of the entire leadership of the APS as role models of the Student Standards of Conduct, or
• the denial of due process to hundreds of whistleblower complaints against Brooks and other administrators, or
• any of the credible evidence and testimony of an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

... zero.




photo Mark Bralley