After the massacre of 17 students at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last February, the Trump administration created a commission headed by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to come up with recommendations to make schools safe.
The report was released today and landed with a great thud.
Some of its proposals were already in place. Contrary to Trump’s demand, it did not recommend arming teachers. It did not call for age limits on access to guns. It recommended mental health measures but did not propose funding for what it thought necessary.
Politico summarized the report here.
The DeVos Commission said nothing about gun control. Its most consequential proposal was to rollback Obama discipline guidelines that instructed schools not to hand out punishments to black students that were disproportionate to those given to white students. This is a bizarre recommendation, since the shooter at Parkman had been expelled and was white. No connection between the crime and the “remedy.”
Randi Weingarten issued a comprehensive critique of this toothless report:
“The Federal Commission on School Safety took a horrendous year of school shooting tragedies and produced a report with a smorgasbord of recommendations—some of which we have championed for years—aimed at making our schools safer. Unfortunately, the report doesn’t address the root causes of the gun violence epidemic: too many guns in our communities and not enough investment in addressing the social-emotional health of our kids. And, sadly, the Trump administration has no coherent plan to address this crisis.
“While the report proposes some worthy strategies already recommended by students, teachers and school staff—including support for school counselors, cyberbullying prevention, extreme-risk protection orders, the troops-to-teachers program, and active shooter training—it does not contain a single proposal for new funding for these initiatives.
“What’s more, the commission appears to punt on the question of arming teachers, rather than taking a strong stance against it, even though parents, students and teachers agree: Putting more guns in schools only risks making schools less safe. But Betsy DeVos continually advocates for this lunacy. The report doesn’t recommend age restrictions on firearms and appears more concerned with the National Rifle Association and the school security industry than with the needs of the people in classrooms.
“But most curious and disappointing is the report’s use of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to push an anti-civil rights agenda that won’t keep schools safe. The report suggests rolling back Obama-era school discipline guidance that was intended to help prevent the disproportionate suspension and expulsion of students of color, students with disabilities and LGBTQ youth—under the guise of making schools safer. The shooter at Stoneman Douglas had in fact been expelled and reported to law enforcement; rescinding discipline guidance and kicking kids out of school doesn’t prevent school shootings.
“Today, the commission and the Trump administration missed an opportunity to bring the country together. Parents, students and educators want schools to be safe. That requires fair discipline policies, but also a real investment in meaningful mental health supports and other key recommendations in the report, plus the advancement of commonsense gun safety reforms to help curb the gun violence epidemic in our country.”
Anyone that thinks the Trump and/or The Betsy will ever want to “bring the country together” is a _____________________. Please fill in the blank if you can think of something nice to say or how to say something mean in a nice way. The only words I could think of would be allegedly unacceptable on this Blog.
What a deal!!! Of course, kids in poverty areas can be killed while inside their homes or walking down the street. How does this expenditure help that situation?
There is a gun violence epidemic and it is caused by too many guns easily available and NO decent gun control. NRA has bought out our Congress and president. DeVos’s commission is a farce.
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The Partner for Safer Schools, a non-profit that gets some funding from security companies, estimates that a typical elementary school can be brought up to a basic security standard for $100,000 and it would cost $170,000 for a typical high school.
The Orange IDIOT speaks!! He wants trained personnel in schools to have access to weapons. I think all of the people who work at the WH should be allowed to carry hidden hand guns and machine guns. These weapons should also be allowed in the House and Senate. Such good protection for students should be also be given to our Congress men and women. Equality! [Personally, I think a shoot-out at the WH would be just fine.]
VIDEO: Allow School Personnel to Have Access to Weapons, Report Says
Betsy Devos so over her head in the position that I am starting to feel sorry for her. Then again not because this woman would not think twice about destroying my livlihood and my family for her small minded idealogy.
Yesterday’s encouraging moment- a judge pointed to the flag and let Flynn know what he had cost the nation. If only the DeVos family faced a judge who publicly condemned the DeVos/Prince family for what they and their fellow Republicans have cost the nation.
This was put out by the WH:
5 Takeaways From Trump Administration’s School Safety Report
Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / December 18, 2018
The 177-page report also tackles building security, violence in the media, and school resource officers, and opposes raising the age for buying guns.
“This is one of the most important things we can do for schools and communities to help them think about creating a positive culture and climate in schools,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told The Daily Signal, referring to the report. “We have to look at kids as individuals, and make sure they are not lost through the cracks and feel isolated.”
DeVos was among the participants in a White House roundtable discussion with other Cabinet members and with community leaders seeking to protect schools and curb gun violence.
President Donald Trump called the report a “very important thing.”
“Nothing is more important than protecting our nation’s children,” he added.
Marshall County, Kentucky, Sheriff Kevin Byars praised Trump for doing more on the issue than the president’s predecessors…
https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/12/18/5-takeaways-from-the-trump-administrations-school-safety-report/
I support De Vos’s effort to end Obama’s anti-suspension policies. This is one area in which she is right. Too many schools are too chaotic, and tying administrators’ hands is making the situation worse.
Sigh!
I don’t support any rules from the top down and DeVos is an idiot with too much money, too much arrogance, and too much ignorance
There are sensible methods to use to deal with children that are disruptive in classrooms and those methods do not all involve suspensions. If suspension is made too easy and acceptable, then more sensible methods may never be applied or attempted.
Suspension must be the last resort.
Instead, schools with high ratios of at risk kids need more professional counselors, in house classrooms where repeat offenders can be sent, and not returned to the streets where they are not supervised and can get into trouble or cause more problems..
And some of those kids want to be suspended so they can return to the streets. For instance, most burglaries take place between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. during school hours. Since many parents work, that means children sent home are home alone and/or at risk of getting in trouble.
An in-house, on-campus, period-by-period suspension center where kids must behave and read and/or do some school work is a much better option than suspending a kid from school all day or for several days. At the end of each period, the kids in those BIC (Behavior Improvement Centers) classrooms are sent to their next class. Students that are identified as repeat offenders end up with more counseling and their parents are called in repeatedly for meetings where behavior modification contracts can be signed with escalating consequences spelled out that might lead to juvenile jail or foster homes if the parents can’t control the child.
The logic leading to the inclusion of this recommendation in the USDOE report was reminiscent of the tortuous logic that linked Sadam Hussein to the 9-11 bombings. None of the school shootings that prompted this report were in any way the result of this directive.
Trump, “Nothing is more important than protecting our nation’s children.” He is full of BS.
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More than 15% of childhood deaths in America are due to guns, study says
By MELISSA HEALY
DEC 19, 2018 | 6:00 PM
More than 3,000 children and adolescents died of a gunshot wound in the United States in 2016, a new tally of childhood deaths finds. These episodes accounted for 15.4% of all Americans between the ages of 1 and 19 who died in 2016, and a quarter of those killed by injury rather than disease.
As they inch their way back to rates last seen in 1999, childhood deaths attributed to firearms — 3,143 — generated 70% more grieving families than those produced by pediatric cancer — 1,853. Guns also broke the hearts of more than three times as many families than did childhood drownings — 995 — or the combined category of poisoning deaths and fatal drug overdoses — 982…
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-gun-deaths-children-20181219-story.html
What is there to say. It is absolutely sickening for anyone to be treated this way. We have excess money for tax breaks for the wealthy but provide this level of care for suffering people. Of course, millions of Americans don’t have any health insurance and can’t get needed care so I guess this is acceptable.
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A 5-Month-Old Girl Has Been Hospitalized With Pneumonia After Being Detained By Border Patrol
Adolfo Flores
BuzzFeed News Reporter
December 19, 2018
…The 23-year-old mother said she and her daughter were then placed in holding cells that migrants call hieleras, or iceboxes. The holding cells have been criticized by human rights advocates who describe them as “often poor and in several critical respects identical to those previously found by US courts to be in violation of [Customs and Border Protection’s] obligations and prior commitments.”
The girl had been taking the antibiotic amoxicillin, but Portillo said she wasn’t allowed to keep the medication in detention. She described the temperatures inside the cells as “freezing.”
Portillo told agents that her daughter was sick shortly after being detained, but they told Portillo it was normal and that everyone coming into the holding cells was ill. She wasn’t allowed to get new medication or see a doctor.
“I said I needed a hospital because her breathing was getting worse,” Portillo told BuzzFeed News. “The agents told me I wasn’t in a position to be asking for anything and that they didn’t tell me to come to the United States.”…
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/infant-sick-border-patrol-cold
Since the blog was posted, according to site (below) 250 deaths by gun
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/incident/1279752
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/there-have-been-47220-gun-incidents-in-the-us-in-2018-and-here-they-all-are-on-one-map-2018-10-27
Hoo-rah! for some Englishman. Trump most assuredly is short-sighted and sluggish on a number of subjects, not just the environment.
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Was a Newly-Discovered Species of Amphibian Given the Name ‘Dermophis Donaldtrumpi’?…Snopes
What’s True
An English businessman paid $25,000 at an auction for the naming rights to a newly-discovered species and chose to name it after Donald Trump.
What’s False
As of December 2018 the naming process had yet to undergo peer review, so the species had not yet formally been named “Dermophis donaldtrumpi.”
BREAKING: New species of legless amphibian named after Donald Trump
The slimy little worm has limited vision and a skull adapted for burying its head in the ground at a moment’s notice.
Named in honour of Mr Trump’s short-sighted and sluggish approach to environmental issues, it’s hoped Dermophis donaldtrumpi will ensure Mr Trump’s presidency is rightfully remembered long after he leaves office…
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dermophis-donaldtrumpi-amphibian-trump/