Terriost obtained information about school system in my area

[Merin]

Originally posted by moimeme

Give up, Dyer. Don't you realize that unless you kowtow to every fantasy, whim, and imagining of every single human - no matter how unrealistic they are or how ridiculous - you are not empathic? Used to be that people were expected to behave sensibly and reasonably and not run off screaming at every imagined threat. The moral of 'Chicken Little' is to not raise needless alarms and get exercised over nothing, not that everyone should flip out because Chicken Little got scared and rush around to try to calm him down.

 

It also USED TO BE that a person didn't worry about going to work and give a second thought to a plane being crashed into thier building.

 

USED TO BE that you could send your kids to school and not worry that there was going to be 2 deranged killers in the building shooting people (BTW I am in Littleton and my kids played right in the park next to Columbine)

 

USED TO BE that when you took your loved one to the airport you could actually walk with them to thier gate and pick them up there too.

 

Times are changing...

 

Heather isn't running scared or acting in an unreasonable way... she is a mom to a little boy she loves a lot, and like all parents she is concerned. It isn't unreasonable to be proactive in doing what she feels is best for the safety and well being of her little guy, regardless if YOU feel the threat is real or if YOU feel she is jumping at shadows... this isn't your little boy.

[pdiddy]

How horrible. Makes you think twice about brining a kid into the world these days.

[Nosmas]

Good Lord Tiki, what the heck happened to your avitar..........you've been possessed and are clearly in need of exorcism:

 

 

[color=red]OUT DEMON SPIRIT!!!![/[/color]size]

[dyermaker]

Originally posted by Moose

I don't think by sending out a letter saying,

 

Dear Parents,

We have been informed of a possible threat to our School on election day. Information we have gathered implies that this threat is merely rumor. However, if you feel a concern for the saftey of your child or children we will understand if your child is absent on that day.

Sincelery,

Principal Moosey

 

i don't call that dumb at all. I call it informative.

It's misinformation!

 

The school was never directly threatened. Someone in Iraq had school plans. The media got wind of it and called the guy a terrorist, when he wasn't.

 

Ergo, there was no threat (real or imagined).

 

 

Originally posted by Fayebelle

If the school can take time to notify parents of an upcoming bakesale or a parent teacher conference then they should make time to notify them of a possible threat to the children's safety.

It wasn't a THREAT!

 

It was a bit of media misinformation.

 

If anything, it should be the media who sends letters to parents apologizing.

[Moose]

Dyer, ok, let's say that you stand by your last post........

 

If anything, it should be the media who sends letters to parents apologizing.

 

Do you think that the media should send letters to all of us for all the miss-information about what's really going on in Iraq?????

 

Or for how they concentrate on all the negatives going on over there? These are images that my children see daily, and it'll be burned into their minds that nothing good ever came from the US pushing Saddam out of power, for stopping this regime from killing innocent people......

 

I'm thinking that as bright as you are, you'll agree with the following, if not, it'll be my opinion that your a hypocrite.....

 

I have gotten letters, emails, and countless randitions of what good our soldiers do over there. However, the media only covers what is going to catch the attention of our eyes and ears, just as soon as they can.

 

The only disadvantage our current President has is that the media, (even though it's supossed to be Bi-Partisan), is giving fire power to his opponent and his opponent is low enough to use the free advertisement to better his cause...........

 

So now, we are blasted with a daily talley of how many of our soldiers sacrificed their lives to allow these people to choose their own destiny, and the bulk of Americans and other countries watch as they get blasted with what the media feels will grab your attention first.

 

Face it, noone get's off on watching peace prosper, they'd rather view controversy. Why do you think there are so many reality shows now? Noone wants to see the, "Cleaver's", or, "The Partridge Family", "The Brady Bunch" or even, "Munsters". Shoot, let's not even dare mention, "Little house on the Prairie".

 

It's no wonder to me that we seem over cautious now and days, and Dyer has a point......the media owes us a great debt for misleading us to believe that there isn't anything positive going on over there.

 

And he's right that the media should be blamed for why we feel like, "Chicken Little"......

 

And it's the media to blame to make SH, and me, and everyone else in our Country uncomfortable.

[dyermaker]

Moose, I was being sarcastic.

That's what happens when you focus on a single line from a post.

 

People are treating it as though the school recieved a threat, that turned out to be a false alarm.

 

What really happened was there WAS no threat, the media simply misreported something. It would not, under any circumstances, be the school's responsibility to cover the media's mistakes.

 

People who say I have no compassion are just being prejudicial for the sake of attacking me, seeing as how I was one of the first people to jump in and console a mother on the fear of someone hurting her son. However, my compassion ends when you're trying to step on toes and cause trouble, and blame a school that had no part in this media misinformation.

[Moose]

Moose, I was being sarcastic.

 

NO DUH!!!! I still think you're on to something though......

 

That's what happens when you focus on a single line from a post.

 

That, "one", line summed up your post as a whole.....you have a tendancy of explaining yourself as if you have to lower your intellegience to get your point across.

 

People are treating it as though the school recieved a threat, that turned out to be a false alarm.

 

What really happened was there WAS no threat, the media simply misreported something. It would not, under any circumstances, be the school's responsibility to cover the media's mistakes.

 

Maybe it's not the School's responsibilty, but considering current events, it would of been a welcomed courtesy.....

 

People who say I have no compassion are just being prejudicial for the sake of attacking me,

 

Oh give me a break! Dyer, you just come off that way to some people. Instead of accusing them for attacking you, why not apologize for giving them the wrong impression? I don't remember you ever, EVER, saying you're sorry for anything you've posted, and meant it.

 

However, my compassion ends when you're trying to step on toes and cause trouble, and blame a school that had no part in this media misinformation.

 

I read the first post you entered in this thread. What you said was sweet. And it should still stand in my opinion. Like I've said before, I think the media hyping up reports like this puts us in the mood to want to step on some toes, and makes us angry, sometimes at the wrong people.

 

I still say the School could've sent a letter home.....or a copy of the report debunking the threat, AS A COURTESY.

[tiki]

Originally posted by dyermaker

If anything, it should be the media who sends letters to parents apologizing.

 

Oh then the USPS would be have to work on Sundays AND holidays to get that job done. Can you imagine how busy they'd be if they had to contact us via mail every time something was misreported.

[PatientOne]

originally posted by Moose

 

That, "one", line summed up your post as a whole.....you have a tendancy of explaining yourself as if you have to lower your intellegience to get your point across.

 

 

Actually Moose, he sometimes has to.

 

Be that as it may...

 

I see and agree with what Dyer is saying here. There was no threat. That is his point- that the only harm done here was through media hype.

 

I also understand everyones anxiety about this issue. We just can't be careful enough anymore when sending our kids out of the house. I recall that I had a panic attack at the beginning of Gulf War I. I seriously expected terrorist attacks at that time from Iraqi based cells. Looks like I had the wrong decade, wrong source of threat.

 

We are still trying to find the right level of diligence in America right now. American society is still evolving to meet the challenge presented by a known enemy that would like nothing better than to light off a nuke in Times Square.

 

The Patriot Act wasn't the answer. I do presume (perhaps naively) that our Intelligence community is keeping us safe and foiling attacks since nothing major has happened since 9-11.

 

The bottom line here is- The terrorists win when something like this happens. They sit back and let us scare ourselves needlessly.

[tiki]

How many parents are in this topic? If I can't relate to a subject, I try to keep my nose out of it. If you can relate to being a parent, feel free to post in parenting. If you cannot, please refrain from making fun of other people for being over protective of their children.

 

I don't want someone with absolutely no parenting experience giving me advice on how to parent, especially if it's ridiculous advice!

 

After all, I wouldn't tell you how to celebrate Hannakuh if I knew nothing about the holiday. I'd respect your views and opinions and keep my nose out of. It's off-topic for me, I wouldn't be familiar with the subject and would look like an idiot posting about a topic I simply had no experience with. --Believe me, I've done it. It is embarassing. That's how some of you look.

[dyermaker]

Originally posted by Moose

That, "one", line summed up your post as a whole.....you have a tendancy of explaining yourself as if you have to lower your intellegience to get your point across.

No Moose, it didn't. I wrote the post, I know.

Maybe it's not the School's responsibilty, but considering current events, it would of been a welcomed courtesy.....

You don't go complaining to the schoolboard about a "welcomed courtesy".

I don't remember you ever, EVER, saying you're sorry for anything you've posted, and meant it.

That doesn't mean it hasn't happened, nor is that relevant.

 

I apologize when I'm wrong. It didn't happen this thread, I didn't say anything wrong.

I read the first post you entered in this thread. What you said was sweet. And it should still stand in my opinion.

It *Does* stand. I have compassion for a mother faced with a scary situation, but that compassion ends if you're just going to cause trouble and deliberately step on toes because you feel the school should bend over backwards to make sure that you're reading the right newspaper.

I still say the School could've sent a letter home.....or a copy of the report debunking the threat, AS A COURTESY.

Moose, no one's talking about courtesy. You're reinventing reality.

 

They're saying that the schoolboard is obligated to send a note home! A note home for something they had no part in, and not neccesarily had any knowledge of!

This was a failure of the media.

 

Originally posted by tikibrandy

How many parents are in this topic? If I can't relate to a subject, I try to keep my nose out of it. If you can relate to being a parent, feel free to post in parenting. If you cannot, please refrain from making fun of other people for being over protective of their children.

 

I don't want someone with absolutely no parenting experience giving me advice on how to parent, especially if it's ridiculous advice!

It's a public forum. If you feel your advice is better suited for a select group of people, send a PM.

 

It's ridiculous advice to be angry with the school board for something they had nothing to do with. The school wasn't threatened. You can pretend I'm "making fun" of someone if it makes you feel better, but what really happened here is you advised someone to behave immaturely, and now you're trying to defend it by pretending its' great parenting.

 

After all, I wouldn't tell you how to celebrate Hannakuh if I knew nothing about the holiday.

You don't have to be Jewish to understand Hannukah.

[moimeme]

Apparently, once a person has decided to be frightened of something or angry about something, nothing on this planet will dislodge those feelings. Whether or not there are good reasons for the feelings, people will cling to them and rationalize them until the cows come home.

 

There was no terrorist and no threat. Snarky remarks about whether people have children or not are unwarranted. People also became unreasonably afraid of SARS. As a living, breathing, human, I was in as much danger as any other living, breathing human of getting it - meaning virtually nil - therefore I refused to panic.

 

I'm sure that a large number of the parents in the areas mentioned in the news took the news for exactly what it was - a baseless rumour. If people wish to remain terrified/indignant/whatever, go ahead. All that's doing is disrupting your own health and your own family - over nothing. If you think that makes sense, well then keep yourself upset about it.

[Moose]

Tiki has a point.

 

I remember going to junior high and got caught smoking in the bathroom. The principal was REQUIRED to call my mom and tell her that he was getting ready to paddle me. My mom told him to wait until she got there. When she did, she let him get as far as swinging for the first swat.....she stopped his arm midway, took the paddle from his hand, and threw it on his desk.

 

You should've seen his eyes! It was so funny! The reason she did that was because it looked to her to be too forcefull of a swat. They argued about it for few minutes while I witnessed it, he was saying things like he does it all the time and knows how hard to swat, I'm to be punished...yada, yada. Mom looks at him and says, "Well, you're not punishing him this way, I'm capable of spanking him at home. Put him on in school suspension."

 

The reason I wrote this is because we had parent teacher conferences yesterday during lunch. My 14 year old has been in the office 5 times last semester for paddlings.....we never got one phone call!!!

 

Last summer my kids wanted to go to the summer program. They ran buses for it this year, which was a privleage, I know that. However, where we live there are two ways to get to the main road, it's uphill and about a quarter of a mile long. We live on a loop. It wouldn't be anything at all for the bus to run the loop and pick up the 13 kids at the bottom of the hill instead of making them climb that hill. Not only is it dangerous because people are going to work at the same time, but also hard on the kids.

 

I called the School to see why the bus wasn't running the loop. I never got a true answer as to why......except that they came out, looked at it and decided against it.

 

Our School went from being very passionate about parent's concerns, to who gives a flying rats a$$.

[dyermaker]

I would agree that a school threatened by a terrorist attack would need to send a letter home explaining what had happened, so that parents have options.

 

However, I think people really want that to be the case in this situation, but it wasn't. You don't have to be a parent to recognize reality. What happened was, someone in Iraq had school plans. The media assumed the man was a terrorist, and made up a story to go along with it. The school wasn't even neccesarily informed of the media blunder!

 

That, Moose, is the "main point" of my post. It's not to demonize concerned parenting, but to discourage being an ass about something for the sake of being an ass, i.e., going in and complaining to the school about something they had no part in. The school never recieved a threat, so they had no duty to relay anything to the parents.

 

If a parent chooses to get really spooked by a news story, I have nothing but compassion. Read the thread, you saw that. If a parent chooses to take that fear and hold the school responsible when they are clearly not, I've got no sympathy. That's just rude. And, as is clear on this thread, a lot of people think that having kids is a license to be rude.

 

Oh, and, sidetrack--they still paddle kids in school? I thought that was like, against the law.

[Moose]

You don't go complaining to the schoolboard about a "welcomed courtesy".

 

Dyer, you act like the school board is above us parents.....they're not!! I pay their salaries! So does everyone who pays taxes in our country.....they work for US!!! I don't know how your school systems work in your and moi's country, but when someone works for me, they dang well better listen! And do the job I expect them to do! And if I want to complain to the School board, they are going to friggin' listen! They may make the decision not to take any action, but by law, they have to listen to the taxpayers!

 

Common courtesy to send a note home to parents is being informative. There could've been parents who caught wind of this before finded out it was a fluke. Geeeez, no wonder this world is so full of hate.......

 

Incidently, Tiki never said that she didn't understand Hannaka because she isn't Jewish....she just doesn't understand it.

[Moose]

Paddling isn't against the law. There are still Schools that are using Corporal Punishment. It's up to the parent if they want to send their child to a School that does.

[dyermaker]

Originally posted by Moose

Dyer, you act like the school board is above us parents.....they're not!! I pay their salaries! So does everyone who pays taxes in our country.....they work for US!!!

It's still rude to mistreat them. Also, considering they never actually received the fake threat, it's also illogical to complain to them.

Incidently, Tiki never said that she didn't understand Hannaka because she isn't Jewish....she just doesn't understand it.

It was an analogy, Moose. Her point with the analogy is that only parents can understand parenting, and my point is that anyone knows what's rude and what's not. Well, almost everyone.

[moimeme]

Moose

 

1. Dyer lives in your country

2. it's ridiculous to claim that the school is obliged to do every single thing you think it should do. Fortunately, it appears that reason may prevail among the school administrators. One hopes that sort of policy can be passed on to the children.

[dyermaker]

Originally posted by moimeme

1. Dyer lives in your country

He knows. He's being funny. Get it? I'm not an American because I disagree with him.

 

It's okay when he does it, because he's Moose.

One hopes that sort of policy can be passed on to the children.

No ****! Sometimes you never know why kids treat people so poorly, and then you meet their parents--and it makes perfect sense.

[Moose]

No, actually I didn't know......I made the assumption that you lived elsewhere based on the times you make your posts......man....you stay up late dude!!! That or you get up REALLY early! hehe

 

I don't think you're un American because you don't agree with me Dyer, I'll take that as an insult. I just don't agree with you or Moi....that's my final answer!

 

I'm Moosey W. Moose, and I approve this message.

[PatientOne]

Originally posted by Moose

Paddling isn't against the law. There are still Schools that are using Corporal Punishment. It's up to the parent if they want to send their child to a School that does.

 

 

Just as an update, only 13 states have no bans on corporal punishment.

 

http://www.stophitting.com/disatschool/facts.php#U.S.%20States%20Banning%20Corporal%20Punishment

[tiki]

Did I mention being Jewish at all Dyer? Do yourself a favor, read the text. I simply said I don't understand it so I can't knock it. Do you understand parenting? Then don't knock it. People are knocking her being overly-concerned about her son's safety. You know nothing about being a parent, you're still a child yourself.

 

You make me laugh, Dyer.

[tiki]

Ironically, I saw a paddling report on the local news just this morning. Sorry, it's still legal in our state. They may contact the parents prior to paddling before hand, but it's not required.

[dyermaker]

Originally posted by tikibrandy

Do you understand parenting? Then don't knock it. P

Parenting is the interaction between a parent and their child. I never mentioned parenting, that's your red herring.

People are knocking her being overly-concerned about her son's safety.

Not at all. I was one of the first to throw in words of support for being concerned over safety.

 

It was when the brilliant idea came up to hold the schoolboard responsible for a failure that wasn't theirs to begin with that I realized it's less about parenting, and more about causing trouble for the heck of it.

You know nothing about being a parent, you're still a child yourself.

An adult simply responsibility for his or her actions. A child blames others when they don't know how to handle themselves. When you go to the schoolboard, and complain that you don't know how to read a newspaper critically and check to see if a story's even true, that's childish.

[Nosmas]

Ok, tikiB, stoneH, et al concerned mommys, this is from an EXPERIENCED father of three grade school kids, a teacher of middle/highschool, and a sometimes principal:

 

Now that I've established my credentials to have formed an opinion, I'll first point out that, within the American school system, whether or not you have children is immaterial: Everyone without children can vote for the school board members in their local district, and all pay taxes to run the schools, so I'll have to, however distastefully, give grudging (yet snarky) support to Ms. Dan Rather in her "superior intellectual" and annoyingly judgemental position:

 

Snarky remarks about whether people have children or not are unwarranted

 

Furthermore, if anyone's opinion should be valued, shouldn't it be those whose age falls closest to the vast majority of kids? Particularly when he can usually articulate those opinions in a surprisingly clear if not often hilariously naive way?

 

Frankly, I'd be shocked if your school doesn't have a crisis management plan that includes response to terrorist activity. Last year the school that I work in was opened designed in part to address the concerns of the community about terrorist threats, including video cameras, strategically placed exits/entryways, metal detectors, and steel "cages" that descend from remotely controlled locations allowing portions of the school to be sealed of from the rest of the building, and on site security that includes armed guards.

 

One thing is missing, however, from the little picture I see: PARENTS.

 

Your son has been in school how long since 9/11? How many times have you visited the school to volunteer to assist them with security concerns rooted in the very real threat of terrrorist attack? What about since the Russian school attack? I'm sure this caused parents and PTO's across the nation to become concerned enough to form their own school security committees! (NOT)

 

Until the public begins to take more responsibility for the administration of public schools by poorly compensated, underappreciated civil servants, then they can expect to receive what they've paid for. And before anyone tries to claim they simply don't have enough time to participate let's just do a little math using a typical middle school of 1,400 6th, 7th, and 8th graders attending 181 days of school every year: If even only 30% of the parents participated to prevent terrorist attacks, then I ought to have at least two DIFFERENT parents in school for security EVERY SCHOOL DAY!

 

If security is such a great concern, then 30% certainly seems to be a low expectation, but it actually represents an unrealistically high number. When (NOT IF) terrorists attack an American school, parents will not look first into the mirror: its so much easier to blame someone else; the FBI, the President, the School Superintendent, the Principal, the Teachers.