by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
A girl was suspended from her high school in an Atlanta suburb yesterday for posting a photo of a crowded hallway at her school on Twitter. The photo showed a hallway clogged with young people during a class change, and not only were the young people crammed together as they tried to move through the halls, many were not even wearing masks.
The school's embarrassed principal quickly danced around the First Amendment and came up with a short list of non-free-speech reasons for suspending the female student - while throwing down his marker to the rest of the student body that airing the school's dirty laundry on social media would not be tolerated.
The principal informed the errant student that she was being suspended for violating multiple parts of the school's code of conduct including using a cell phone during school hours, using social media during school hours, and violating the privacy of other students by posting photographs of them on-line.
The girl's mother came to school later in the morning and expressed her displeasure over the principal's action. Then the superintendent became involved - likely after having visited with the school's lawyers - and by the time the school day ended the suspension had been lifted and the school was deep in the process of re-evaluating its operating procedures.
Georgia, like so many other states, is bowing to pressure from the federal government to get schools up and running. It is a next-to-impossible task for the schools that is made even harder by a lack of guidance and resources from the state and national governments.
The federal government has an expectation and flexes that expectation through policies of the US Department of Education and the control of funding streams. The state governments have expectations and also use administrative policies and funding to get their expectations enacted by the schools. The communities have expectations which they express through policies of their local school boards, the actions of school support groups and private citizens, and the media. And the teachers have their own expectations which move forward through faculty organizations and initiatives.
But when all of those varying expectations are finally synthesized into a working school routine, it then faces the final challenge: the students. The students in the classrooms - and in the halls - and on the buses - are at the absolute point at which the rubber hits the road - and if they suddenly realize that they are all just pawns in a dangerous charade - well - then it's time to go on-line!
And by the time the principal finds out there is a problem, it is already being discussed on an international level - and the New York Times is on the phone seeking comment!
Citizen Journalist
A girl was suspended from her high school in an Atlanta suburb yesterday for posting a photo of a crowded hallway at her school on Twitter. The photo showed a hallway clogged with young people during a class change, and not only were the young people crammed together as they tried to move through the halls, many were not even wearing masks.
The school's embarrassed principal quickly danced around the First Amendment and came up with a short list of non-free-speech reasons for suspending the female student - while throwing down his marker to the rest of the student body that airing the school's dirty laundry on social media would not be tolerated.
The principal informed the errant student that she was being suspended for violating multiple parts of the school's code of conduct including using a cell phone during school hours, using social media during school hours, and violating the privacy of other students by posting photographs of them on-line.
The girl's mother came to school later in the morning and expressed her displeasure over the principal's action. Then the superintendent became involved - likely after having visited with the school's lawyers - and by the time the school day ended the suspension had been lifted and the school was deep in the process of re-evaluating its operating procedures.
Georgia, like so many other states, is bowing to pressure from the federal government to get schools up and running. It is a next-to-impossible task for the schools that is made even harder by a lack of guidance and resources from the state and national governments.
The federal government has an expectation and flexes that expectation through policies of the US Department of Education and the control of funding streams. The state governments have expectations and also use administrative policies and funding to get their expectations enacted by the schools. The communities have expectations which they express through policies of their local school boards, the actions of school support groups and private citizens, and the media. And the teachers have their own expectations which move forward through faculty organizations and initiatives.
But when all of those varying expectations are finally synthesized into a working school routine, it then faces the final challenge: the students. The students in the classrooms - and in the halls - and on the buses - are at the absolute point at which the rubber hits the road - and if they suddenly realize that they are all just pawns in a dangerous charade - well - then it's time to go on-line!
And by the time the principal finds out there is a problem, it is already being discussed on an international level - and the New York Times is on the phone seeking comment!
1 comment:
A Republican President is exerting pressure on the State of Georgia to open schools during a pandemic. When, exactly, did the Republican Party embrace the tenets of big centralized government over their long cherished ideals of State's Rights, the Tenth Amendment, and local control? Was it about the time they decided to give the top 1% and wealthy corporations a huge tax cut that starved the federal government of operating revenues? Suddenly Republicans are becoming budget hawks, or budget chicken hawks.
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