School Officials Vote ‘No’ To Allowing Police Officers To Carry In Schools

The Baltimore school board has rejected a proposal that would have allowed police officers assigned to the city’s schools to carry guns while patrolling inside school buildings.

About 90 specially trained Baltimore officers patrol the schools. They currently can have their weapons when they patrol outside of the building, but must store them when they are inside.

A state-level bill had been introduced to allow armed officers in schools, but after the school board’s 10-0 vote to reject the idea at a Jan. 22 meeting, Democratic Delegate Cheryl D. Glenn said she would withdraw her proposal.

Arming what are known as school resource officers was bitterly opposed on racial lines in a community that was divided by the Freddie Gray case, in which Baltimore police officers were accused of allowing a young black man to die in police custody in 2015.

The Obama-era Justice Department intervened to order changes in the police department amid allegations of institutional racism.

That past was very present as the board considered allows police access to their weapons in schools, The Baltimore Sun reported.

“The SROs are under federal consent decree,” said Kimberly Humphrey of the ACLU of Maryland.

Parent Melissa Schober said 89 of 90 arests by the school-based officers were of black citizens.

The meeting eventually dissolved into disorder after students with the Baltimore Algebra Project interrupted the meeting with a demonstration. “No guns in schools,” they chanted, according to the Sun. “We gonna fight for our lives.”

Glenn said she was “very disappointed” by the board’s action, which she said reflected the pressure board members felt from the students. “I think that this is a very unwise decision,” she said. “These are sworn police officers. They are not security guards. They have more training than Baltimore police.”

During the public debate on the proposal that led up to the board’s meeting, Sgt. Clyde Boatwright, president of the school police union, said the measure was essential, according to the Baltimore Sun. He called it “common sense” to end a farce in which police were “running around with empty holsters.”

“I would hope that a little bit of common sense kicks in,” Boatwright told the Sun in October. “The decision-makers need to fix it, and fix it now.”

“Time is of the essence. Each day we recover another gun, we’re rolling the dice. We’ve gone from recovering guns to guns being fired in schools,” he said. “The question is: Who is going to be held responsible when these guns are used to strike a student?”

Parent Aimee Harmon-Darrow, however, launched a petition drive to oppose allowing police officers to have their guns in school.

“Arming school police may lead to a student’s unfortunate death,” she wrote in the petition, invoking the Freddie Gray case and signaling her concerns in uppercase, bold type.

The petition said parents must let board members know “that guns have no place in our school, especially in the hands of officers who feel empowered to pull the trigger if they feel their personal safety is at risk. THIS IS A TRAGEDY WAITING TO HAPPEN.

“Our schools should not resemble prisons with armed guards. This is not the way to create a conducive learning environment,” the petition stated. “This is not the way to further restorative practices.”

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DeSantis Issues Order To Get Rid of Common Core

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday he will get rid of Common Core in the state and wants to have parents and teachers help implement a revised set of standards in 2020.

“Common Core has failed teachers, parents, and our children,” DeSantis wrote on Twitter Thursday.

“That’s why I am issuing an Executive Order to eliminate Common Core in Florida. We will streamline standardized testing, make civics a priority in schools and increase the literacy rate.”

Common Core aimed to establish high academic standards in K-12 English and math. Critics of Common Core said it was too rigid, confusing teaching methods for parents and takes away control from locals, according to Fox 13.

DeSantis wants to implement a new plan, with the input of parents and teachers, in 2020. “I told you I was going to do something about this,” DeSantis said at a press conference, WFTV reported.

Broward County Public Schools superintendent Robert Runice, whose district experienced the Parkland shooting in February 2018, is on board with DeSantis.

“I welcome the opportunity to work with the governor and the commissioner of Education on revising standards and regulations to give local districts greater flexibility on curriculum and testing,” Runcie said in a statement, according to Local 10.

“We need fundamental reforms in public education that will give our teachers the freedom they need to better engage students. It is time to reduce our reliance on a testing culture that is more about ranking students on their potential, when our focus should be more on developing their potential.”

DeSantis’s office did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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How To End Socialism in America’s Schools

Jan. 20 marked the beginning of National School Choice Week. This year, more than 40,000 events were held to highlight the benefits of school choice—an important effort considering the abysmal track record of the nation’s public schools and the fact that government schools have a near-monopoly on education. In 2018, more than 91 percent of American K–12 students attended a public school.

Although National School Choice Week is traditionally a time to celebrate freedom, it also provides an important opportunity to reflect on the disturbing fact that the U.S. government-run school system abhors individual choice and now serves as one of the world’s largest socialist propaganda organizations.

The government’s education monopoly emboldens an army of left-leaning administrators and teachers to indoctrinate students with their political ideology, which is much closer to Karl Marx than James Madison.

It’s no wonder then that 51 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 and 57 percent of self-identified Democrats now have a positive view of socialism, according to a 2018 Gallup poll.

How did this happen? Could it be that the majority of those surveyed flunked U.S. and world history? Did they fall asleep during the history lessons on the horrors of the Soviet Union and Mao’s China? Probably not. It’s much more likely these people, like millions of others, have received an education teeming with socialist propaganda.

One doesn’t have to look far to find evidence socialism has permeated government schools. The National Education Association, which includes more than three million members (the largest union in the United States), doesn’t even try to hide its socialist philosophy. Among its “Core Values,” NEA lists: “Collective Action. We believe individuals are strengthened when they work together for the common good … we improve both our professional status and the quality of public education when we unite and advocate collectively.”

Additional examples abound of teachers and administrators engaging in socialist activities inside and outside classrooms. For instance, Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, is a member of the International Socialist Organization. He even moderated two panels at the 2018 Socialism Conference in Chicago. Other participants on the panel have been linked to the ISO and Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the United States.

During the 2018 West Virginia teachers strike, Zac Corrigan, a member of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, called for “living wages,” single-payer health care, a government-run universal jobs guarantee program, and the need for getting students—your children—more involved in teachers’ union activities.

Many parents recognize that something is amiss in the government-run school system, but they feel trapped because they cannot afford to transfer their child to a private school or don’t have the time or money to homeschool.

It doesn’t have to be that way, however. Parents can break this broken model by demanding universal education choice, which can best be provided through a universal education savings account program.

ESAs allow parents to remove their children from socialist classrooms by providing them with a tax-free account that can be used to pay for education-related expenses at other public schools, private schools, or even for homeschooling. ESAs, which are funded using the money already allotted for public schools, would empower parents to enroll their children in schools that teach our nation’s founding principles of freedom, self-reliance and limited government.

Giving parents and students education freedom would finally bring robust competition to the education sphere, forcing government-run schools to rethink the wisdom of maintaining their socialist-driven curriculum programs, including those linked to Common Core.

The best way to stop the march toward socialism in the United States is to provide all parents the opportunity to choose the educational path that most aligns with their values. Until parents have the freedom to choose their children’s education, students will be unable to escape these socialist indoctrination centers.

As President Ronald Reagan so eloquently warned us: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it.”

The fate of freedom hangs in the balance. Unless Americans demand education freedom, Reagan’s warning will become reality: “you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

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