Betsy DeVos has been put in charge of a task force to make recommendations on school safety. The only members are Cabinet members. No students, teachers, principals, or Superintendents will be on the task force or commission. Anyone who has worked in the federal government will tell you that Cabinet members are very busy people, and they are surrounded by yes-men and -women and assistants and speech writers. In their own domains, they are sovereign. They will give very little time or attention to this sham assignment. This is a farce. Chances are that the report has already been drafted by an NRA member of Betsy’s staff.
Politico reported this morning:
WHY TRUMP’S SCHOOL SAFETY COMMISSION OMITS STUDENTS, TEACHERS: The new White House commission on school safety will consist of just four Cabinet secretaries – prompting concerns from parents, students, teachers and school administrators who feel they should play a bigger role. But the Trump administration says it’s about getting to work quickly.
– Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday testified during a hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees education funding. While she was there to discuss the Trump administration’s fiscal 2019 budget proposal, she offered new details about the commission’s makeup. DeVos will chair the commission, which was recently unveiled by the White House in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., last month that left 17 people dead. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will join her, she told lawmakers.
– “Is that it? Just four Cabinet secretaries? No experts? No Democrats?” asked Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.). DeVos replied, “This is an urgent matter and we want to ensure that we’re able to move and operate as quickly as possible and without getting bogged down by a lot of bureaucracy.”
– What does DeVos mean by “bureaucracy”? Keeping the commission to just four federal officials who have jurisdiction over school safety issues means the group can “get up and running as quickly as possible,” said Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill.
– “Advisory commissions with non-Federal employees have to follow Federal Advisory Committee Act rules, which adds significant bureaucratic bloat,” Hill said in a statement. “FACA imposes many bureaucratic hurdles, such as requiring a charter that must be approved by the General Services Administration and the appointment of an Agency Committee Management Officer and a Designated Federal Officer, as well as other requirements that would delay the start of this important effort.”
– Input from students, parents and teachers “will be critical,” Hill added. “The Commission will receive input from and hold meetings over the coming weeks and months with students, parents, teachers, schools safety personnel, administrators, law enforcement officials, mental health professionals, school counselors and others holding a wide variety of views.”
– Still, education groups want to ensure they’re heard. “It is critical that parents have a seat at the table whenever decisions are made that impact their children, and particularly on the critical issue of school safety,” said Jim Accomando, president of National PTA, which represents parent-teacher associations nationwide.
– “As school building leaders, principals must be heard on school safety and student well-being issues,” said L. Earl Franks, executive director of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for policy and advocacy at AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said that “by keeping it only to Cabinet members, it’s necessarily political … I would venture a guess that the commission described by Secretary DeVos today isn’t set it up to be super productive.”
The more I learn about these billionaires who grew up in a world of wealth and privilege that inherited their wealth, privilege and the corrupt power that comes with it, the more I think they are not human. That wealth and power turns them into a malignant alien beast.
YES!
I was watching the budget proposal devos was giving to congress and the more I hear this devos speak, the more I am shaking my head. I mean this woman, as dumb as we all think she is, was taking questions from different congressional people who one after the other were becoming annoyed with the fact that betsy never answers a question!
Question after question this creepy midwestern reject dodges every question and now I am saying to myself “this woman is a freegan expert!! She sits there and dodges question after question and it is quite astonishing to watch. And, the best part of the hearing was watching how frustrated the democrats were with her answers of deflection to the point that one congress woman from Massachusetts said YES or NO please and devos FINALLY said yes to a question of whether she agreed or not. This woman is more dangerous than I originally though…scarry person.f
The video is posted at 1. Betsy is not, contrary to popular opinion, dumb. She is evasive. She dodges, bobs, weaves. She deflects. She knows the answer. She knows they won’t like it. She doesn’t want to give the answer.
I sob when I listen to the children on the news, and I think of my own 14 year old granddaughters, and how they would be scarred for life if their friends had been slaughtered. I think how my sons lives would be turned to ash, if their daughters were mowed down.
I think about all the students whom I came to love during the ten months they spent in my classroom practice.
This is about ending assault rifles!
To make schools, our businesses our very homes, safer, our CONGRESS must sure that anyone who buys a gun has a background check, making it hard to buy ammunition for such killing machines.
There must be laws governing flea markets where anyone can arm themselves– so they can exercise their right to kill children, and teachers, and citizens, because they are angry or ‘broken.
You need a prescription to buy medicine, You need a license to drive a car, but any lunatic can buy a gun.
THIS is not about the 2nd Amendment… it is about the CONSTITUTION which says that we have the right to LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT of happiness… which does not exist when assault weapons of war, are sold like popcorn!
The alleged perpetrator, who was shot dead yesterday in Great Mills, MD, used a handgun. See
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-maryland-handgun-laws-20180320-story.html
Do you favor banning handguns as well? Maryland has strict firearms controls, including background checks and fingerprinting,and a four-hour training class.
None of these seemed to have deterred the alleged shooter.
You are asking me? I would adopt the Australian Rules for gun ownership, which is a very rigorous process for getting permission to own any gun.
Australia has some good ideas. I believe that many of them might have some effect on illegal firearms use in our nation. And I was asking no one in particular. Banning certain “military” types of rifles would have had no effect on the Maryland shooter, he used a handgun.
If the Md. shooter were in Australia, he would not have a handgun.
Australia has a 28 day waiting period and had a mandatory buy-back program. They found statistically that a certain percentage of deaths dropped with the number of guns destroyed.
What about the story of a teenager who used his father’s hand gun and went to school and shot a 6 year old boy in the head? Handguns are deadly.
Guns have no usage except to kill. I read a statistic that says only 1-2% of killings come from automatic rifles. Those killing make the headlines.
This country has a very serious problem. One statistic said that in 2015, 36,000 people died from guns. Around 2/3’s of those were from suicides. The rate of suicides goes down with a waiting period. Having people wait makes them reconsider what they are thinking of doing.
So far, the only thing I’ve read is to propose a 3 day waiting period. That is nonsense for something as destructive as a gun.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for the RICH.
Our govt. is not fulfilling it’s mission according to Our Constitution.
Crossposted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Why-Trump-s-school-safety-in-General_News-Guns-In-Schools_Issues_School-Reform_School-Shooting-180321-703.html#comment693933
with this comment:
My friend Diane Ravitch was once Asst’ Secretary of Education, and to this day she is passionate in her commitment to CHILDREN, their learning and their safety, but Trump gave us Devos– who is divorced from empathy!
She said recently: https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Betsy-DeVos-Opens-Up-ESSA-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Betsy-Devos_Choice_Education_Education-For-All-180206-46.html#comment688683
‘You have to hand it to Betsy DeVos. She never gives up on a bad idea, no matter what the evidence shows. She does not waver in her commitment to destroy public education;” and she is going to do nothing to protect the children or support the teachers.
Libertarian zealots like the DeVos family and the Koch brothers will now inform this ‘safety commission’! They have no need for educators, or citizens who really cares about our children.
WHY TRUMP’S SCHOOL SAFETY COMMISSION OMITS STUDENTS, TEACHERS:
Because no one in the Trump Administration has any respect for anyone who attends who works in a public school?
Everything DeVos does drips contempt for public school teachers and students.
I don’t know why this would be any different.
I’m sure Eric Prince (Mr. Blackwater) will profit hugely from this commission’s recommendations.
Actually, Lisa this could be a possibility. Right after the Columbine HS massacre in 1999, Eric Prince proposed placing private security forces in every school in the US. If guns in schools become legal that would be a bonanza for a private security firm.
In the name of “security for the children” this commission could put our students in the hands of a criminal mercenary.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/21/cambridge-analytica-links-erik-prince-blackwater-f/
EVERYTHING Betsy Devos does, she does with intent to make money for her family. The reason there will be no input from teachers, parents, students and school admin isn’t because of the time it would take to get the commission up and running. It will be because she will have control over contracts (likley no bid) that will directly benefit her family and their business holdings. She is nothing more than a greedy liar….she is certainly no christian as she claims to be.
This is amusing. Ed reformers want DeVos to resign partly because of this:
“First, she has no demonstrated interest in the public schools that educate 90% of our students”
True- Betsy DeVos does absolutely nothing to serve public school families, which, as the article helpfully points out, are NINETY PER CENT of families.
But either does anyone else in ed reform. As evidenced by the piece. Which is supposedly about “public schools” but completely ignores public schools and spends paragraph after paragraph cheerleading charters.
The complete and utter disregard for public schools, public school teachers and public school students is an ed reform problem, not a Betsy DeVos problem. All she does is bring the problem to the forefront.
Public school families haven’t had an effective advocate inside the federal government for 20 years. DeVos isn’t a one-off. She’;s the norm in ed reform.
The silver lining in the phony commission is no one in any public school will pay any attention to it, so we won’t be stuck with ideas that come from politicians who oppose public schools IN public schools.
It could be worse. One of these people could be actually contributing something.
I do not see the point of having students serving on the commission. I can see the value of having students appearing as witnesses, and providing input to the experts. Likewise, I do not see the utility of having a third-grade art teacher on the panel. School security is a serious subject, and it is too important to be left to amateurs. As a person who has worked in combat zones, and been under armed guard, I know what I am talking about.
A commission made up of Cabinet Secretaries is ridiculous. Presumably they have day jobs.
Do you oppose having any educators on the commission?
I have no problem with an “educator” serving on the commission, in an advisory role. But protecting lives is serious business. The voting members of the commission need to be seasoned security professionals, with solid experience in security, architecture, engineering and other disciplines, which are directly related to security.
I also, fail to see the utility of having a commission composed solely of cabinet secretaries.
Are we so short of security professionals, that we have to seek recommendations from amateurs and government bureaucrats? We need security engineering expertise from the US Navy SeaBees and the Army Corps of Engineering, and other security professionals.
I used to work for the US State Department. The State Department commissioned a new embassy in Moscow. The architecture and engineering was done by a committee composed of diplomats. About 90% of the way through construction, it was discovered that the entire building had been compromised, and there were transmitters and listening devices all through the building. The electronics had been placed there by the KGB.
“A camel is a horse, designed by a committee” – Author unknown.
Excuse me, but is Betsy DeVos or the other three Cabinet members “seasoned security professionals?”
The United States is not going to rebuild or rehab almost 100,000 traditional public schools.
The money isn’t there, but I’m sure those security specialists that probably all work for the private sector weapons industry do not care because even if the U.S. added another trillion or two to the national debt, they’d still walk away with even larger fortunes from all that construction to turn those schools into bunkers.
Erik Prince would love to have that contract.
Once bitten by the greed virus and the power money buys, few recover to be a normal human being again. I want to call it the god bug (with no capital letter).
Q Excuse me, but is Betsy DeVos or the other three Cabinet members “seasoned security professionals?” END Q
If you think that cabinet secretaries are seasoned security professionals, you are wrong. see my comment:
Q I also, fail to see the utility of having a commission composed solely of cabinet secretaries. END Q
We are talking about protecting children’s (and school staff’s) lives. There are certain steps that can be taken, that are cost-effective, and will not require rebuilding of school facilities. Video cameras, alarm systems, fencing and other types of security technology, can be installed at public school buildings, at an acceptable cost. Security guards, both uniform and plain clothes can be assigned to schools.
The presence of uniformed personnel, and the installation of security measures will have the extra benefit, of deterring other crimes, like drug dealing and bullying and school property theft.
The worst thing that we could possibly do, is go out and spend a lot of money on “stuff”. In addition to installing security technology, school staff needs to be trained, in emergency preparedness. Schools need to have lock-down drills, and evacuation procedures. Teachers/guidance counselors need additional training in how to spot potential problem students, who may have violent tendencies. Police records need to be shared with school authorities, to assist in identifying potential perpetrators.
Other cost-effective measures can be instituted, without breaking the bank.
We are talking about saving children’s/staff’s lives here. It is no time for sarcasm.
Four Cabinet Secretaries have large departments to run. They are the wrong people to put on a task force of you Expect time and thought. The task force should hold hearings around the country. The Cabinet members won’t be there. School security is a serious issue, not a chance to grandstand and score political points. Sham.
Charles: ” Video cameras, alarm systems, fencing and other types of security technology, can be installed at public school buildings, at an acceptable cost. Security guards, both uniform and plain clothes can be assigned to schools.”
The US has TOO MANY GUNS. Get rid of the existing guns through a buyback program and require strict gun laws like Japan and Australia. We do not want our schools to become prisons. Besides all of this ‘cameras, alarms, fencing and other types’ does nothing to prevent more killings in EVERY place outside the schools. Our citizenry is no longer safe at concerts, churches, theaters or even sidewalks. Are you planning to fence in every grocery store?
How many innocent people are going to be shot in the future even if every school managed to come up with your prison scenario?
This is a serious problem, and not just one for schools.
The NRA should pay the cost of added school security.
Or as long as guns are sold, double or triple the price to pay for School Security.
And tax gun owners.
What do you think is an “acceptable cost”?
I’m about the attempt to educate you on the actual cost and how ineffective those very expensive measures will be.
The high school where I taught sat on 40 acres. What is the cost of installing a high security fence for 40 acres and that was only one school in a small district with 19 schools.
For instance, metal or chain link cost $5 to $15 per foot.
If the 40-acres was square, then that’s about 8,356 feet to fend. At $5 a foot that is almost $42k, but at $15 a foot it is $125,340.
Next, how many armed security personnel will that one high school have to hire to secure that 8,356-foot perimeter?
Even 100 security guards constantly on patrol along that perimeter would never be able to guard it all, all the time.
Then, according to Glassdoor.com, the average base pay of a campus police officer is $52,540 annually. The high school where I taught that had a high-security metal fence due to the brutal street gangs that lived in the community around the HS also had about half a dozen of these CPOs. That adds another $315,240 (not counting benefits and health care costs) to the cost of attempting to secure one public school campus.
Now, multiply all that by almost 100,000 public schools across the US.
In addition, when I served in combat in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine, an entire heavily armed, highly trained Marine Corps division couldn’t keep even one Vietcong from slipping through our barbed wire, bunker-rimmed perimeter and blowing up things deep inside the wire.
I do not think you spent one-second thinking about the actual cost and no matter how much we spent there is no guarantee all that effort would make our children safer.
Lloyd: If high walls and guards are going to make schools safer, we’ll also need to have high fences topped with barbed wire around churches, theaters, concert halls [especially the outdoor type], shopping malls, outdoor circuses, skating rinks and any place where people gather. Security is good for all.
[I remember the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur. They had a very high solid fence with circular barbed wire on top of the fence. There was an outcry when a high rise was built next to the embassy, making the ‘security’ not so good. Someone with a long range rifle could now shoot into embassy grounds.]
How about building high Trump style fences around each shopping mall and installing many guards to protect everyone who goes shopping. Why not? We all need to be secure in our country. Of course, no high-rises should be allowed next to these malls.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to get safe strict gun laws passed?
Imagine spending billions to build all those walls just to create a false sense of security to protect us from our own neighbors.
What’s left when we are so paranoid we don’t trust anyone else … the answer is social media through the internet with only virtual friends we never actually meet in person. Much safer that way.
Eventually, we’d all live in our little-armored bunkers afraid to step outside, plugged into our virtual friends not even knowing if they are real or an AI pretending to be another human to collect more info on us to sell to corporations that want to sell their crap to us or control us.
Every home would have a secure package drop for what we buy online. Each drop would be armored and have its own scanner to detect dangerous materials and alert us.
Major alarm sounds causing us to jump out of our skin. “Danger, danger, danger, a package with white powder in it was just dropped into your safe zone vault. Call the corporate police. Do not open. If you do not have safe-package insurance, you will have to pay the corporate police $1,000 to come out and remove the package. All credit cards accepted.”
Lloyd: Ahhh. The beauty of our future if Trump, the NRA and the GOP have their way. The high cost of security is only relevant if we want to be truly safe.
I don’t think there is any way to be 100-percent safe. For instance, the Roman Empire’s Secret Service was the Praetorian Guard and 13 of Rome’s emperors were assassinated by the ones that were supposed to protect them.
It’s obvious that the U.S. Secret Service has earned an F for not learning anything from the Roman Empire’s Praetorian Guard?
Here in Fairfax VA, the J.E.B. Stuart High School is in the process of changing their name to “Justice High School” . The cost of this name change is going to exceed $1 million dollars see:
http://wjla.com/news/local/1-million-estimated-cost-to-change-name-of-jeb-stuart-high-school
If a school system can afford this type of money for a name change, school systems can afford a reasonable security upgrade.
We will never make public schools (or theaters or grocery schools) 100% safe, all of the time. We can only make them safer.
This is how you guarantee the outcome and recommendations are what you want.
On Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:01 PM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” Betsy DeVos has been put in charge of a task force > to make recommendations on school safety. The only members are Cabinet > members. No students, teachers, principals, or Superintendents will be on > the task force or commission. Anyone who has work” >
Any grizzly bears on the commission?
Seems like they would have some relevant input.
Everything DeVoss touches is a sham. amway, what DO YOU except?
Exactly.
When they change standards, the most the teacher gets to do is comment on a set of existing standards. Commenting on their inappropriate nature is off the table. Why would teachers ever be asked about anything. The only thing the right and the left agree on is that teachers are to blame for education’s failures. Why should they listen?
Ed Dept spokeswoman Liz Hill reels off a list of bureaucratic encumbrances to having non-federal employees on a govt commission – sounds like a technical answer/ brushoff. This might be the usual Trump admin hubris, claiming to eschew norms to ‘get things done’ [which means either nothing gets done, or what gets done is undermined by issues the norms are there to avoid]. Or it could be a sensible-sounding premise which misleads from the possibility that there are any number of federal employees whom it would make sense to get on board – but Trump wants the commission directly under his thumb.
Great thinking people here with lots of facts. It feels like a bunch of gossip at work. With the dawning of the manipulation of people’s perceptions on social media and other places what is one to do about helping to change things? Not just putting the fear of changing the Second Amendment’s interpretation into scientifically researched (not rigged for any particular outcome) facts but putting all the things currently under change under scrutiny. Putting changed into context of a changing population, tax base, the technology evolution and more would be my wish. Sadly, business as usual, as this commission demonstrates will just feed the alligators in the swamp. I’ll predict that the results of the commission will show that business will fare better than the educational setting, you know, DeVoss doesn’t like to talk about schools.
Florida has a unique opportunity to ban assault weapons. Once every 20 years Florida’s Constitution provides for the creation of a 37 member Constitution Revision Commission for the purpose of reviewing Florida’s Constitution and proposing changes for voter consideration. The CRC meets for approximately one year, traveling the state, identifying issues, performing research and possibly recommending changes to the constitution. Any amendment proposed by the CRC would be placed on the 2018 General Election ballot.
The last meeting was held last week in St Petersburg, resulting in an amendment proposal to ban assault weapons. If the CRC would bring this Proposal to the voters in November assault weapons would be banned in Florida. Let’s hope the CRC doesn’t blow it!
I think I might have been getting thought to Senator Todd Young [R-IN]. I’ve written every day starting on Feb. 20 until this morning’s post on March 23. I’ve been directly blaming him for the unnecessary deaths by guns that occur since his official online stance is to have guns available to everyone and to have no reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. His statement, “In the aftermath of any tragedy, it is important to gather the facts and use that information to better understand how to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring.” at least means he is thinking. (???) I have to laugh at how many times I’ve written. Hoo-rah!
…………
Dear Ms. Ring,
Sincerely,
Todd Young
United States Senator
Carol,
Maybe your persistence paid off!
Diane, I have written letters-to-the-editor for The Times of NW Indiana. They only allow 150 words and one letter per month.
So far the headlines of my protests letters have been:
Trump’s budget doesn’t deliver on desperate needs
Congress should reinstate health funding for vulnerable children
Many DACA recipients are productive members of our society
We must lead on eliminating nuclear threat
Trumps Tax propostal mostly benefits the wealthy
I keep trying.
Here is my last, most likely, letter to Senator Todd Young on the subject of gun control.
….
Dear Senator Todd Young,
I am grateful that you took the time to respond back to me concerning the work you are doing regarding the 2nd Amendment. In your letter are some statements that give me hope for the future.
1.) “I know we all share a common desire to prevent acts of gun violence.”
2.) “It has become clear that the shooter should not have been able to obtain a firearm. In the aftermath of any tragedy, it is important to gather the facts and use that information to better understand how to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring.”
3.) “Congress and the administration must work together to rigorously evaluate the issue of gun violence in America and effectively address its root causes.”
I am extremely happy to read that you are actively working to help not only Indiana but have put forth proposals to help the whole country. This is important since gun deaths and resulting injuries have reached astronomical proportions. Any other cause of this much destruction to lives would vigorously be studied.
My one suggestion is that for school safety measures, the NRA should be the source of funding. It is their insistence on the proliferation of guns that has caused this gun problem.
However, it is still apparent that you are interested in keeping the $2,896,732 that was generously donated by the NRA. This money needs to be given back to Indiana. My suggestion is to check out the poorest school districts and donate money to these districts. Gary, IN, for example is in extreme poverty. This state is too heavily dependent upon property taxes. If one lives in a wealthy, or even middle class district, things are scrapping along. However, poor districts depend upon people paying taxes. Too often because of forces beyond their control, these taxes never get paid. Also the degradation and deterioration of poor areas ensures that the property isn’t evaluated very high. The sum total of this is that the schools do not receive what they should be getting to provide decent relief from poverty.
These kids desperately need funding well beyond what the wealthy get. Studies at NIH have proven that the stress from the environment causes these children to be unable to adequately learn. They are the equivalent of living in a war zone. [Imagine trying to study when guns and drugs are so prevalent.] I couldn’t study for an exam when this and family concerns such as lack of a decent home, lack of medical care, lack of decent food and lack of constant parental care prevail.
Do the right thing and give your ill-gotten $2,896,732 to our PUBLIC schools. They will forever be grateful to you and those people vote.
I am a retired elementary band and classroom music teacher who also worked overseas teaching in Bolivia for 2 years and Malaysia for 11 years.
Thank you for responding to my letters. I have hope for a better future and a lot depends upon the work that you CONTINUE to do.
Sincerely,
Carol Ring
Carol, thank you for persisting. Write letters to the editor too.