From Jere Hochman, superintendent of schools in Bedford, New York:
Daily, your followers find wisdom, insight, and courage in your posts – an ally in taking on one educational cause or another. Today, we find comfort – and an ally in taking on causes of life and death proportion. And – to Lisa (above) – thank you for sharing. The loss of a son to gun violence is just tragic. May his memory be a blessing.
If only America had a memory – and Presidents and Governors and Legislators had some courage.
30 years ago (next month) my principal, my fellow assistant principal, and I with others literally wrote the book as we worked through a school shooting. Three students died and not a day goes by… And, so it began – “counselors will be available” – how to talk to children about death – gun accessibility – calls for metal detectors (which do not stop terrorists and those on an evil mission). 30 years later, nothing has changed.
And, after mourning these deaths, hearing the stories of teacher heroism, and responding to the questions about our schools locally – it will be business as usual.
* Not one gun will be removed from the streets or deemed illegal and the NRA will spin their usual “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
* Federal, state, and local funding for mental health services and social services will continue to be cut drastically from budgets.
* Local CPS (child protection services) and “hot lines” will continue to be understaffed and overloaded with cases that never get addressed.
The only glimmer of hope is that Mr. Obama does not have to worry about re-election and maybe, just maybe, there are a few other legislators out there who care more about lives and principles than getting re-elected.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If Obama can circumvent the entire legislative process to impose federal education policy under Race to the Top, perhaps he could start a competitive grant program to compel states and cities to be leaders in ending gun violence, “Race to Stop Mass Slaughter”? Surely the epidemic of mass shootings and other gun related violence is at least, if not more, of a crisis than falling behind in international test scores.
RSMS. Sounds like a program worthy of federal intervention, Wall St. investment, and private foundation grants.
By the way, I’m sure Adam Lanza had great standardized test scores.
From reports on Lanza, we might assume he high test scores. The NYTImes reported that he was in honors classes.
People dying with preventable or curable diseases, students and teachers being forced to work in a joyless test based environment, assault weapons with no conceivable use but for killing people, the way poverty has become a self sustaining cycle through a lack of needed services, the split between the rich and the poor in our country, and the list goes on ad infinitum.
To all these issues I ask myself one simple question with a sigh, “What will it take to break through the special interest roadblocks and solve this. How heinous must the human carnage be before reason wins the day.”
Why won’t we put in the red light before the fatal accident, rather than as reaction to the death of a family so horrific and unjust that we cannot look away. Let us hope that this is one such turning point.
Diane,
It took all my strength to click on this link and read the self-promoting Rhee statement where she can’t even acknowledge the teachers who died. I captured her statement should she make revisions to cover her a$$. This woman is evil and once again she tries to slither into a situation where she is not wanted or needed.
http://www.studentsfirst.org/pages/michelle-rhee-statement-school-shooting-tragedy-in-newton-connecticut
Here is what I am proposing for Obama’s next federal grant competition, “Race to Stop Mass Slaughter.” http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/race-to-stop-mass-slaughter
What about the fact that Connecticut already had good gun laws? Maybe there is more to it. Maybe we need to teach people, like this shooters mother, that having guns in their homes does not protect them from anything.
Yet guns can be purchased from out of state, and brought in. I don’t know the specifics of this case, but one of the reasons NYC mayor Bloomberg is fighting for stricter gun regulation is because violent criminals are purchasing arms outside of New York, and bringing them in. So there needs to be nation-wide efforts to regulate arms.
If a suburban housewife can have a military assault rifle in her closet for the purposes of “self defense,” apparently their gun laws aren’t that good.
Good point.
Well, guns in the home don’t protect you from a crazy family member, that’s for sure. I wonder whether this mother had her guns stored properly in a gun safe. She should have, presumably knowing her’s son’s nature. One report I read said she herself taught both her boys to shoot. Her chickens certainly came home to roost.
Today is Sunday…. our hearts are heavy as we mourn for the unspeakable loss of young lives full of promise, the loss of the valiant educators who faced the unimaginable to protect their children, and their families who have to find a way to try to carry on.
Tomorrow is Monday… and every educator, every principal, every superintendent, school secretary, cook, custodian, nurse and guidance counselor in every corner of the country will be at school a little bit earlier, to quietly console each other before the morning bell and give each other the strength to greet their children bounding through the school doors, with arms and hearts outstretched…
We know that deep down underneath in their sub consciousness, as it dwells in ours, lurks the thought of a gunman charging into their school and into their classroom.
We will ease their worries, help them feel safe, let them know we love them… and then we will try to teach them.
We will carry on, we are a collective, we are a community and we come to school each and every day knowing that at any given moment, we might be the first responders too.
And we ask ourselves… how has it come to this?
High school students at Columbine, Littleton, Chardon…. and now kindergarteners and first graders at Sandy Hook Elementary… thousands of children taken down by gunfire on the streets of our neighborhoods, in their homes…. decades of senseless death and violence.
And we ask ourselves… what is next?
It is up to us as educators, to join together and take charge of our children’s futures and tell the real story of the complexities of our children’s lives and our teaching profession.
We are facing a frontline in our schools as a result of a rise in lax gun laws, a growing culture of violence and as a result of decades of poverty and alienation our society.
We teach children who are lost and suffering. We teach children who are desperate to be seen, to be heard, to be connected and cared for.
We help 20 – 30 students face their own frontline each day; divorce, parents losing jobs, deaths in the family, loneliness, addictions, depression, anxiety, extreme disabilities, new immigrants unable to speak English, struggling to fit in, we deal with it all… and then we teach, we inspire, we motivate, we challenge… we don’t give up on our children.
We are the voice of our students… they are our “special interest.” We need to take our kids frontlines to the front doors of our Statehouses across the country and demand more restrictive gun laws and an end to legislation that allows our children’s education to be used for profiteering purposes.
We need to demand that every penny of profit garnered by schools be re-invested in our children so that they grow up to be healthy, whole and well educated so that we are able to stop this cycle of violence.
We need to tell the story of CEOs building million dollar corporations off of the backs of our children and our public tax dollars. If there is a profit, how about hiring more guidance counselors, a full time school nurse, a social worker, more teachers when classrooms reach 25 or more students? How about hiring more intervention specialists for our special needs students, and a full-time school psychologist to help support children who are diagnosed with depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses on the rise?
It is time to galvanize and charge forward into our communities and join the momentum growing from parent groups across the country fighting to preserve public education, superintendents and school board members writing open letters to their communities to fight for quality public schools for their students, teachers fighting for their voices of expertise to be heard, and state supreme courts finally ruling that it is unconstitutional to channel public funds to for-profit schools.
The train is on the track and poised to run across our country, we are lining up and ready to go… educators, parents, principals, superintendents, school board members, supreme courts, legislators…
Let’s get going… let’s demand stricter gun laws to protect our kids.
And let’s demand that we preserve our public schools, the heartbeat of our communities, where we educate, care for and keep our kids connected to one another and their communities.
Let’s do everything in our power to help keep the innocence of childhood as a civil right, not to be stolen away at point blank range in the blink of an eye.
We are the voice of our children, together, let’s take action to protect our kids, before it’s too late.
Maureen Reedy
Parent & Educator
Columbus, Ohio
Thank you Maureen. Tomorrow in school, and for the rest of the year too, we teachers need to be cognizant of the kids that are out of normal view. It’s the kids that are always walking in the halls alone. The kids that don’t reply when you say Hi to them. The kids that don’t look up when they walk by. The kids that eat lunch by themselves. The shy kids.
I need to reach out to them more than I do, and I have always tried to do this. Maybe I’ll be the only person that day to say HI to them. Maybe I’ll be the only person this week to ask them how they are. Maybe I can be the only person to ask them their name. Maybe I can remember it and address them by their name next time. Maybe I can spend some time with them at lunch.
As I understand it, Adam Lanza was an honors students who liked technology. He was like many kids I teach.
Yes, we must take our profound sadness and turn it into action in honor of our brothers, sisters, and children that have paid the ultimate price for what education in our country should be! This unspeakable tragedy must become the tipping point for all teachers, parents, and students to just say “NO!” to the insanity that has taken over our public schools of our nation. We must unite and “Just Say NO!” to Arne Duncan and stand firm that the billions of dollars diverted to testing and lining the pockets of large corporations must STOP! We must take a lesson from our beloved colleagues and students that gave their lives and were fearless on Friday morning! President Obama must hear our voices and invite us into a conversation that for too long we, the teachers, have taken a back seat.
We must ask ourselves, how fearless are we that we allow the large corporations to dictate what we think and how we think, but most importantly how our beloved children grow and learn and think. Let our grief turn into action. Let us come together to Stop the Insanity. Let us honor the lives of those that were fearless!
Everybody wants to blame the guns. Everybody wants to take them away. Does anybody know where the most people where killed in a school and how they was killed. The Bath School Disaster was done with out a gun. Take a way the guns and bad people will still find ways to carry out their plans. I am just saying that we need to study and find ways to predicted these out busts.
The public has allowed this society to become this sick and is now reaping what they have sown. We need to face up to our responsability for those who have been elected who have not been for those who elected them and yet nothing is done about it. We cannot allow only the corporations and wealthiest to run the country at the expense of the regular citizen. If we do this is only the beginning.
I was struck today by a video on Youtube, of three US presidents reacting to three mass school shootings (Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook). The lack of progress we’ve made as a country in the thirteen years since April 20, 1999 is readily apparent, as the statements are nearly identical and the violence only worse.
Empty promises should fall on deaf ears as long as no action is taken.