San Diego’s Superintendent of Schools Cindy Marten announced that the district would return the armored vehicle that the Pentagon had given the district.
“Superintendent Cindy Marten announced the decision in a statement Thursday night.
“Some members of our community are not comfortable with the district having this vehicle,” Marten said. “If any part of our community is not comfortable with it, we cannot be comfortable with it.”
“The decision to return the vehicle, valued at more than $700,000, was praised by school board trustee Scott Barnett, who last week announced his opposition to the idea.”
After the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, following the killing of Michael Brown, the public became aware that the military was giving weaponry and armored vehicles to police departments and school police. Public revulsion to militarization of civilian authorities and police has caused some, like San Diego, to return these “gifts.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank goodness for sense!
Jolly good. What were they doing with such a vehicle in the first place? Some Freudian drama being played out?
A number of school districts and police forces accepted a “free” offer of military equipment from the Pentagon, thinking it would be useful in a shooter crisis. But the public perception is that it is wrong. And it is wrong to militarize schools and local police forces. Good for S.D. for returning their “gift” of a Mine Resistant Armored vehicle.
Diane,
Free or reduced price is not relevant, at least for me. The situations in LAUSD and San Diego – procuring such ‘hardware’ – are not reasonable decisions, no matter what the stated ‘rationale’.. Sometimes, digging deeper than the surface reasoning, using a psychodynamic oriented ‘lens’, provides a ‘true’ and richer, albeit more scary, understanding of the dynamics in operation.
I had a dream last night about getting a bunch of free stuff, mostly pens. I sorted through counting out what I was told I could have with great diligence. When I had my pile all chosen, someone asked me if I had updated my subscription. All my enthusiasm went out of my eager collecting. The “free stuff” was no longer worth it. I guess as people stop and think they realize that they really can’t subscribe to the meme that would allow them to accept gifts of surplus military equipment for their school systems. (I wonder who was going to drive the armored vehicle? The maintenance staff?)
Darn. There goes my idea for the Homecoming float.
Dear MathVale,
Your comments are always thought provoking, but this one gives us a special smile.
Arne Duncan says, “So I want to know what’s happening in your community” as he does Back to School Bus Tour. Call 202-456-1111 per his e-mail cited at Newark Parents Union Facebook page.
Is she another Broadie? When superintendents start to act like CEOs rather than as employees of a district, I begin to wonder about their training.
How do the Broadies get through? I mean, I realize they get anointed/appointed, and not really hired by school boards, but how the heck did they “suddenly” become considered qualified when the qualifications were moving up the teacher/principal ladder? Did Broad get the regulations, laws, etc. changed? I know TFA lobbied to get regulations/laws changed so its scabs can work mostly for charters these days, and laws/regulations were changed so charters could hire a percentage of uncertified, unqualified “teachers” – so how did the Broad Supe school come to be and actually get those Supes appointed?
Cindy Marten worked her way up to principal. She is not a Broadie.
How do the other Broadies get through? How did Cami Anderson of TFA fame get through? I don’t understand how they are unqualified by whatever the qualifications are that they do not meet, yet the get the job. What qualified Deasy?
C’mon Ms. Ravitch…I know that you have some sort of connection with Marten but really!
Marten worked her way up to ELEMENTARY Principal and is mentored by a group of rich education investors in North San Diego County. She did not have a fraction of the credentials that are actually in the POSTED requirements for San Diego Unified Superintendent and was promoted over a large number of more experienced and more credentialed candidates in a closed board session without ANY community input for the first time in San Diego Unified School District history…you can read it all in my blog as i have invited you to do previously .http://districtdeeds.wordpress.com/
While she has been in office she has been secretive, authoritarian removed any principal or staff who disagreed with her like a dictator. She has made blunder after blunder because of her inexperience and she rules by fear.
I am basing this on over 10 years of first hand experience in the San Diego School District. You are basing your opinion on a few visits to San Diego when she sold you her Photo Op bill of goods…which is one of the things she is really good at.
As I mentioned in an earlier post—she owns the MRAP acquisition debacle since, even though the very first inquiries were before she took office, she approved EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT for the final approvals, the planning to get it to San Diego and the $5000 it cost to get it here…without ANY BOARD APPROVAL. She DID NOTHING to STOP the process for over a year.
I know you want to let her off the hook but that is not reality. In fairness, why should it surprise us that she would blunder through the MRAP acquisition since the biggest fleet of vehicles she had ever managed prior to her promotion was the GOLF CART the custodian used on her elementary school campus!
It is OK if you like her…but lets call her for what she is…a Broadie , without the credentials to lead the 7th largest school district in the United States.
Fear still reigns in public schools: my granddaughter’s school in rural VT just had a lockdown that followed on the heels of their 9-11 lesson. A kindergartner, she explained to me that 9-11 was “a bunch of bad guys attacking us” and that the kids in her school all went into the basement to “hide from bad guys” who might come to the school. While I am not certain what was explained to the kindergartners, I AM certain what was taken away from the lesson: be afraid… be very afraid! And when kids (and parents) are fearful, receiving gifts like grenade launchers might seem reasonable… oh, and playing outside after school? Maybe it’s not such a good idea.
“Fear still reigns in public schools.”
I remember the “Go under your desk, in case of an attack” drill, in the
50’s…
And so what is an armored tank going to do? Roll down an inside hallway and blast through classroom doors? Really? Where will it be housed? School districts can be large-how long would it take to get to an “incident”? Wow. Makes me think there is a darker agenda here.
When I was teaching in public schools as a band director years ago, I was looking to find military equipment for my band programs, in the form of musical instruments that had been used by the service bands that had been replaced. Certainly a tuba or a set of timpani that had been played and cared for by professional musicians couldn’t be in worse shape than anything in the band room, right? After about 2 years of running down this and that and the other channel, all I could ascertain was that they were likely in a warehouse at Fort Meade, but even despite some connections to the Army Band I wasn’t able to get so much as a clarinet reed, let alone anything we could use….so I find it particularly galling that this kind of stuff is being handed out to school districts while we struggled to find some of the harder-to-find instruments for a school band program.
I’d like to say it boggles the mind, but after all the fruitless work spent on the effort, I think it’s more “business as usual.”
I think it important to understand the message this ‘equipment’ sends, namely that those in authority are those with the means to kill you. This is the mindset that both the military and (apparently) our current ‘lawmakers’ wish to send.
Education is a ‘drawing out’ designed to maximize the potential of students, to make them (in the words of J. Coles) ‘crap detectors’ so they can function in and contribute to a democratic society. ‘Education’ respects the innate value of the recipients, mere ‘teaching’ does not always rise to that standard, but it should.
Our society is changing, rapidly. Someone, somewhere, doesn’t want democracy. Instead, they want compliance, the compliance of ‘those who serve’ the rulers. The military hardware is a symbol of the hierarchical system they hope to impose. It has no place in a democracy, and no place in education.