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During the outbound portion of my walk, there were police helicopters from two different agencies circling an area near a school and a shopping area. I saw both city police and county sheriff vehicles speeding in that direction. Later on, I saw school district police and sheriff's SRO vehicles as well.
I checked the local news sites and the Los Angeles television stations' sites, but no one has anything about it. Which is good news, I guess. It means no kids were shot at the school.
By the time I was heading back inbound, the school district and SRO vehicles had departed. The city police and most of the sheriff's deputies were leaving the area.
It's an unsolved mystery. Potential #crime ... #local-news
Also: #step-count: In both October and November of 2023, my steps exceeded 500K (according to my phone). I expect weather, temperature, and the shorter days to prevent this from happening in December and January.
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This reminded me of why we got school resource officers in the first place. After Jonesboro and Columbine, we started hearing about violent encounters on campuses more frequently. No one wants the next generation to be slaughtered before they grow up, locked in with their killers like prison inmates. So police and sheriff's departments started stationing officers on campuses to try and prevent such happenings (with wildly enthusiastic support from parents).
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@gnu2 Unfortunately, it is not worth it. The US—and world—economy demands educated workers. And I hear daily about how many parents did nothing to help educate their own children during the lockdowns. Effectively, there were many families whose children skipped over a year of schooling.
I’m in favor of homeschooling and charter schools, but parents have to be willing and able to do the required work, including learning about the subjects themselves. If they won’t, then those kids are only damaged by homeschooling and other such outside the classroom schemes. That means we will always need public and compulsory schooling.
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@gnu2 In some areas, charter schools are (by far) the best schools. Both #son2 and #Daddy_A attended charter schools from 7th grade on, where they were relieved from experiencing the constant fights that their public middle schools suffered.
As a result of attending "schools of choice" where disruptive students were expelled, they were able to:
* do actual dissections of various field-collected insects and invertebrates
* go on "the science boat" and be see the marine life they were being taught about
* do a project where they connected with a radio telescope (this program is available to schools around the country, but the local school district never participated)
* learn simple computer programming in C++ on Linux
* hike to the top of the largest local hill (strictly off-limits to the public, though I'd taken them there before) and then down to the river on the other side
* visit the home atop another hill built for the local community founder (couldn't enter because it was in poor condition)
* explore the actual physical requirements of certain careers (example: construction course had students learning to build walls from 2x4s and sheetrock)
* enroll in sponsored courses at the local college (Daddy_A never participated; he believed he wasn't smart enough)
* some students took such languages as Latin, but mine didn't (one took French and the other took Spanish, but even having French as an option is something the local school district did not offer)
So I know that the big national teachers unions oppose charter schools, claiming they're stealing money from the public school system, but that doesn't seem to be the case in CA (the only state where I have any experience). The school district administrators' high pay is robbing the district schools of funds to pay teachers and buy supplies.
I also have heard some home school advocates claim charter schools have all the issues of public schools (which is almost true), but since some of them do not even believe public schools should exist, they oppose charter schools as well.
To this, I point out that many parents are completely unsuited for homeschooling. For example, there are many working single parents. There are also many parents who are uneducated and many who do not understand the value of a rigorous education. The same parents who don't ensure their children go to school on time every day and complete assigned homework after school are NOT going to suddenly take an active role in making sure their children learn what they'll need to know in order to participate in the economy and in the political system. And finally, there are parents who cut corners--cheat--at everything. One cannot expect those parents to do differently when it comes to teaching their kids.
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}
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