Texas, the School Police State

In Texas, as in other states where unrestricted access to guns has led to an epidemic of gun violence and fear of mass shootings, the result has been an increased presence of police and accompanying police brutality inside institutions of learning. 

The New York Times offers a grueling account of a detailed investigation into policing policy and practice inside Texas public schools. Shocking stuff, even for a state governed by a supermajority of christofascists.

Clips:

. . . the constant presence of officers has transformed the way many public schools manage discipline, subjecting students to heavy-handed police tactics for behavior that once would have landed them only in the principal’s office, The New York Times and The San Antonio Express-News found.

Officers in Texas displayed startling belligerence at times, grabbing or tackling students a fraction of their size over misconduct that often appeared to be minor. Children in elementary school, including one as young as 6, were handcuffed. Teenagers were arrested, charged with crimes and even jailed. In the most extreme cases, they wound up in hospitals, bruised or concussed, after being body-slammed or shocked by Tasers, which are prohibited in the state’s juvenile detention facilities but allowed in its public schools. . . .

. . . in Texas, no state agency has the power to routinely review school officers’ actions and weigh in on possible overreach.

Lawmakers here have embraced school policing without establishing safeguards required for meaningful accountability, policing experts said. A 2019 law meant to keep officers out of “routine student discipline” does not define the term or detail repercussions for violations. Police departments in Texas are not required to report incidents of force in schools unless they shoot someone.

Rhee in Denial

While DC pols and Michelle Rhee debate whether the solution to increasing violence at Anacostia High School and other DC schools is better solved by prosecuting parents for their failure or by the introduction of "peer mediation" programs to stop the knife fights, no one is talking about the utter vacuum in leadership, the community-exploding device we know as NCLB, or the deepening poverty throughout the District that is at the heart of all the school issues.

Meanwhile Rhee's privatized police force, Hawk One, continues to roam the high school halls looking for dates while, otherwise, identifying likely candidates for the new alternative detention camps that are on Rhee's list of education solutions, too. Will Michelle be able to get her new charter system with permanent temp teachers in place before the schools burn down? Stay tuned.

From WaPo:

. . . .D.C. State Board of Education member William Lockridge, who represents wards 7 and 8, said the Anacostia situation was triggered by tensions about the enrollment of students from Eastern High School, which is being reorganized under the No Child Left Behind law, and M.M. Washington Career High School, which was closed because of low enrollment.

"I think it was a bad idea from the beginning," Lockridge said. "The community forewarned the administration that this was going to happen, and it's happened. They're not listening."

Rhee said the transfers played no role in the disorder.

Responsibility for security at D.C. schools is shared by "school resource officers" provided by police and a private security firm, Hawk One. Parents and teachers have complained frequently about the ineffectiveness of some guards, saying they fraternize with students and do little to enforce order. School officials said that although they have no immediate plans to replace Hawk One, training for the guards will be upgraded. . . .