Paring Knife Update: School Board Meets Behind Closed Doors, Issues Useless Press Statement
Via Instapundit — blogger Sean Sorrentino attended this morning’s emergency school board meeting in Lee County, NC, and wrote up a great blog report of what transpired. It’s worth your time. Basics: The board met, went into executive decision to “preserve the attorney client privilege,” and emerged 41 minutes later to issue this statement:
The Lee County Board of Education is legally prohibited from releasing details and commenting on this student discipline matter further. The Board, however, contends strenuously that the related television and newspaper articles are inaccurate and that all relevant laws and board policies were adhered to and followed. Additional information will have to be obtained from the District Attorney and the Sanford Police Department. The Board, however, will be glad to comment further on this matter if the student and her parents will provide the Lee County Board of Education a written release of the school records.
If the press reports are really inaccurate, the school district should spell out exactly where. This statement, crafted in all likelihood by the school system’s lawyers, insults the media and the intelligence of just about everyone who has looked into this case. That is awful crisis communications strategy.
They probably spent all or most of their 41 minutes behind closed doors drafting that statement, which tells me that their decision to do nothing constructive in their “emergency” meeting was baked in ahead of time. Did they plan this via email or phone calls prior to the public minutes of the meeting? It sure looks like it.
The implied threat to the Smithwick family came after the meeting, when the officials stayed around to speak with the press;
When the discussion arose about the Smithwicks providing a written release, the Superintendent said that he would not, in their place, give a release to the press, because he would not want the press to be rooting around in his child’s records. That struck me as an implied threat. Don’t sign a release, or we’ll plaster every little detail of her records all over the news. That mischaracterizes the nature of a release. A parent and student may release all, some, or none of her records to anyone she chooses.
Take this, plus the way the school has implied that Ashley isn’t really suspended — she just can’t come to school – plus the way the superintendent’s first statement slyly brought the marijuana issue into this story, and we seem to be seeing a school district leadership playing word games to make the student look bad, and thereby themselves look better. That’s not working, folks.
No pun intended, but it seems that these petty bureaucrats are intent on exacting the death of a thousand cuts on themselves.
Okay, maybe I intended the pun a little bit…
It does seem like when these schools do something stupid like this they double down and go into stupid mode.. Like the boys in California who were kicked off campus for wearing patriotic shirts on Cinco de Mayo… Stupid is as stupid does.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/05/06/2010-05-06_california_kids_blasted_for_wearing_american_flag_shirts_on_cinco_de_mayo.html
“under the banner of learning… [US Schools] will one day be governed by such toads and crocodiles as unknown even in Spain under the Inquisition…. Narrow-mindedness, enormous pretensions, excessive self-importance, a total absence of any literary or social conscience; these things will do their work…[and]… will generate an atmosphere so stifling that every healthy person will be nauseated.”
Why the outrage? The voters put these people in power; they maintain them in power; they approve of their actions at every election. I’m in favor of a revolution to expel them, but, as best I can tell, I’m the only one. So: get used to it. It’s the people’s choice.
Actually – this is more a question of WHICH people.
School – public schooling – suffers at the end of thirty years or more of ‘power’ transition. To oversimplify? Those parents with money, status, or simply an interest in their children, have moved in substantial numbers OUT of the public school system. As they left, the ‘ratio’ of power (and intellect and even interest) between the ‘parent’ party and the ‘administration’ party tipped. Severely.
This is not to say that everyone with a child in public school is lower class ( or stupid, or ignorant, or indifferent) merely that in terms of the *average* … things have tipped. The median parent may be little less than before ( at least in the ‘better’ suburban schools) but it takes only the loss of a handful of high-power parents to tip the ‘encounter’ probabilities between those one dare not offend and those one can easily ignore.
Thus we see the result in the contempt that the ‘administration’ party has for the ‘parent’ party. Why not? They need not fear the powerless. We also see the result in the absence of ‘revolutionary’ zeal.
Those parents who would object – who DO object – to the offense and abuses and general incompetence of the public school system have “voted with their feet”. They now have “no dog in the game”. (If anything, it is to their benefit that children other than their own are disadvantaged re their own precious offspring.) The parents who remain attached to the system generally lack the power to create your desired ‘revolution’ and/or are unaware of the disaster at hand and/or simply have no interest in the matter. (Depending on attitude and intellect and acculturation – mix as required.)
As for the children? Well, they are PRODUCT not customer. When did you last ask your soap or lightbulb for an opinion on the manufacturing process?
Annie,
Great post, but I’ll add a slightly different take on one comment. The children are not the product, they are the raw material, the commodity supply to feed the machine that MAKES the product…which is lock step, indoctrinated Lefty-light, who’s entire goal in life is to become part of the polite professional liberal left.
Its true a lot of good kids with concerned involved parents have been pulled out of public schools. But many here in the “guilty liberal” burbs of historic Bucks County PA are extremely affluent (median home price in my borough is 800k) who think the public school system is marvelous….100K average salary for teachers, 30 million dollar “office” renovations, 10 million for lights and astroturf at the football field, I forgot HOW much for an olympic size indoor POOL….So long as they rail against the “greed”, and preach their lefty “we owe the world” nonsense, the locals think its great…the guilty liberals feed the machine that is strangling the rest of us.
Well said and reasoned
What a silly and ignorant comment about Spain and the Inquisition! If you insist on saying something, at least get your facts straight.
You can’t just parachute in, call someone silly and ignorant, and then skitter off without elucidating on what, exactly, was said in error. After all, isn’t that what the whole school board brohaha discussed in the initial post was about? Saying that the media reports were wrong (i.e.,silly and ignorant) and then not saying HOW they were wrong. Are you by any chance a public school employee, aw?
No I am not but you must given how poorly you read! Please do not comment unless you can follow the argument. My criticism was directed toward the silly and ignorant comment regarding the Spanish Inquisition.
Gales of riotous laughter. I believe the Inquisition was, metaphorically, the rule by toads and crocodiles with the personal qualities I suggested. If you believe this in error, that is, that the Inquisition was the rule by the noble and just, say so; don’t mince words. Name the Inquisitors you admire.
Excellent riposte!
It does not concern me in the least what you believe. However, if you are going to make silly and ignorant comments about historical events such as the Inquisition, you should have your facts straight and not pretend to be learned simply by parroting a cliched narrative.
Who are these inquisitorial toads you are convinced were so terrible? Why don’t you name names and provide information of their “crimes?”
Don’t make ignorant comments and then expect me to carry your water by doing your homework for you. You make the claim, you provide the evidence that supports your point. Otherwise, stick to what you know and avoid historical allusions of which you apparently know nothing.
You would do well to laugh less and study more.
Thank you, Cardinal Fang!
I agree on the allusion to the Spanish Inquisition. The goal is essentially the same…to enforce orthodoxy, but, I doubt the politically correct crowd of today will resort to the methods used by either the Catholic Church or by the Spanish monarchy during the Inquisitions to achieve the goal.
That is, I doubt if they’ll use torture to secure confessions or have people executed by burning them alive if they refuse to recant.
At least, I hope they won’t.
So, what, exactly, are the parents’ options vis-a-vis a lawsuit against these bureaucrats? Surely defamation and/or libel would be an option. But if the school board has already lawyered up, why hasn’t the family? Gloria Alred hasn’t been on our TV screens for a least a week and must be chomping at the bit to represent a nice white girl with a good track record.
H-LY SH-T! Gloria Alred. I sorted so hard I almost inhaled my mouse!
That’s high test snark.
A three pointer.
“6. Saying that press accounts are “inaccurate,” but not spelling out where the inaccuracies are, which will only make the media more hostile going forward.”
Never consult a lawyer when you actually need a PR consultant. This isn’t going to end well.
WRONG! It always ends well, for the SCHOOL that is.
Think anyones going to get punished?
Think again.
This kids life is already ruined, shes already had her school year disrupted. She will be marked for destruction IF she’s ever allowed to return…she’s certainly off any sports teams, thats for sure, and will will get no courtesy letters to prospective colleges….count on a noticeable “slip” in her grades, too, along with more “encounters” with failing to follow rules.
Local Governments are full of angry busy-body control freak types, you’ll soon see her FATHER or MOTHER in a “traffic stop altercation” before the snow melts. Brothers and sisters will be on thin ice as well, mark my words.
Even if they sue, and win big-time, who do you think pays that bill?
Not the School, or anyone in it that was behind this debacle…..
The locals pay (with their taxes), while the guilty keep they jobs and pensions.
Heard news last year of that school in PA, that had laptops cameras spying on kids at home? They lied about it, and fought tooth and nail to keep the details hush-hush….turns out there were over 50 THOUSAND screen shots secretly taken by the school INSIDE students HOMES.
Number of people fired? ZERO!
Witness the awesome power of the low level petty bureaucrat.
They would destroy that poor girl’s academic future just to save themselves from looking foolish.
Then as their foolishness is revealed they begin to issue veiled threats and go into bunker mode.
They suspended her over nothing and when they began to take some heat they file a criminal complaint against her to show just how tense and life threatening the little apple knife situation was.
Thank god someone intervened or a carrot might have been peeled.
Keep at them, Bryan. Make them feel the heat for this apparently ridiculous, cowardly, bureaucratic and union-driven decision.
Agree… Time to start digging into this little tax payer funded fiefdom and the elites that run it.
Witness the awesome power of the low level petty bureaucrat.
They would destroy that poor girl’s academic future just to save themselves from looking foolish.
Then as their foolishness is revealed they begin to issue veiled threats and go into bunker mode.
They suspended her over nothing and when they began to take some heat they file a criminal complaint against her to show just how tense and life threatening the little apple knife situation was.
Thank god someone intervened or a carrot might have been peeled.
The reference to the Sanford police department is interesting, after all – the school can’t charge anyone with a misdemeanor. The police ARE the right people to ask about that.
The easy thing for the board to do would be to claim a mixup, blame the kid for it and end the suspension. If they really wanted to make it go away, they’d let her go back to school and the press would lose interest after a week. The haven’t done that – they’re standing by the original decision. Your blogger is right – that is a high risk strategy if they’re in the wrong. Maybe they don’t think they are?
I actually assumed the meeting would be closed doors. They were discussing the legal affairs of a minor, who has received a summons to a court appearance. I don’t think they should be interfering with that by letting the media report on the evidence beforehand. Oh, and let’s keep in mind that the school’s story WILL come out in court, presumably under oath, where it can be questioned.
If you really want to help this girl, pass the hat ’round for a good lawyer and let him handle it.
If you assume that the original decision was wrong, then it does look pretty bad. If you assume that the original decision was right, then there isn’t anything strange going on here.
Richard Fernandez (Belmont Club) calls this type of behaviour by the educators ” deniable intimidation”. That’s the key to understanding this whole fubar.
Petty bureaucrats can’t resist a soft target. That’s why a third grade boy was labeled as a sex offender for kissing a girl in his class. That’s why a 14 year old girl caught with a Midol tablet is labeled as a drug pusher. I hate to give any credit to Bill Maher, but he once said, “Zero tolerance is zero brains,” and he’s right (for once).
Another news story here:
http://www2.nbc17.com/news/2010/dec/31/2/lee-county-school-board-standing-behind-superinten-ar-658135/
Ashley’s mom apparently says a release is no problem. And according to this report, it was the super who made the decision, not the principal.
“This isn’t over yet, by a long shot.”
Nope. Not by a long shot.
Matthew, on the other hand, according to this report, the Smithwicks are hedging about the records.
I have been on the Smithwicks’ side as this unfolded and I remain so–but I have been taking pains to note that all the facts are not in yet.
Every October 20th ought to be declared “Take Your Paring Knife to School Day” in remebrance of the fact that the school administrators welfare comes before the students at public schools.
How silly can school bureaucrats be?
Several years ago, when my daughter was in grade school, her grandmother taught her how to knit. My daughter loved knitting hats and scarves for herself and her friends. Since she had a 45 minute bus ride between home and school, she decided to spend the commuting time each day knitting. She enjoyed doing this for about a week until the school administrators decided my daughter’s knitting needles were potentially dangerous weapons. They demanded that my daughter leave the knitting needles home. Failing that, they would be confiscated and she would be punished.
No consideration was given the danger that lurked in her fellow bus riders’ backpacks.
PENCILS! Not only PENCILS, but SHARPENED PENCILS!
God save our Republic.
When I was in 5th grade we studied guilds and the teacher made us learn how to knit in class with, horrors, real knitting needles. Back then, the real horrific thing was the boys were made to do a girlie think like knitting.
I have yet to comprehend how knitting needles are considered to be dangerous weapons. Only some steel knitting needles have sharp points. Most have blunt points. Then there are the plastic and the bamboo needles.
Some of these decisions are so totally ridiculous.
For the record, when I went to school, many, many moons ago, I used to take my knitting and crochet on the train. My journey was about 1 hour in length and it helped to pass the time. Also, I got a crochet layette completed for my sister within about 6 weeks !!!!!
Public education is now based on everyone reaching the lowest common denominator. It is just easier when the School Board is stuck on stupid.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,”
Okay, what am I missing here?
Random SEARCHES of Persons and Effects for Drugs. And this doesn’t violate the above how?
And these random searches are shown to be effective in their purpose, or keep on being ridiculed because they keep trapping the innocent with some technical violation of a zero tolerance policy, but the real rif raff continue unabated.
I’m sure this is some real good training for people to become subjects and not citizens, but really, of what value will the constitution be when we find that the real meanings have been cosigned;
No animal shall sleep in a bed (with sheets)
We are in a WAR on Drugs. The Constitution gets suspended during a war. Didn’t you know that? We also have an ongoing war on terror, a war on poverty, and a war on child pornography. When all these wars are finally over (if ever), we’ll start following the Constitution again. Really! (Jesus’ comment that “the poor will be always with you” doesn’t bode well for the war on poverty, at least, ever ending.)
As with the TSA we are seeing the Drunk in the Lamplight effect here.
—
A drunk was crawling under a lamp post when a police officer walks up to him.
“What are you doing?” asks the officer.
“I’m looking for my Car Keys,” answers the drunk.
“Where did you loose them?” asks the officer.
“Over there,” says the drunk.
“So why aren’t you looking over there?” the puzzled officer asks.
“Because the light is better here.” the drunk says.
These idiots, and the TSA like to look where the light is better rather than where they may find something that they would actually have to deal with. Those ‘real’ druggies are dangerous don’t you know.
Good one except I heard and told it a little different, it was that he had lost his money and not his keys but it is still a great joke!
After several years of teaching, I can honestly say that I’ve never met a school administrator worth a bucket of warm urine.
While I agree wholeheartedly with your opinion Bulgaricus, I must remind all here the people now running the educational institutions in this country were also “educated” by that very same system because it’s been in place so long and probably finished their formal education in a school like U.C. Berkeley. Yep. Their motto being, “Stupid is as stupid does.” BUT their lawyers will be from shark infested school.
So essentially you are saying that we are experiencing a ‘copy machine’ effect on a poor quality product to begin with.
I cannot thing of a single rebutal to that concept.
The reporting of this situation must continue. The school board holds that definitive facts have not been disclosed, and misinformation is rampart. This may be. What is known is that the primary mission of a school board is education, and that the denial of this public right to a student defeats this goal. This denial has enormous financial consequences which are actionable. Key questions might be: does this student have a history of violence? Carrying weapons? A severe discipline problem? No, have been the reports. Is the student a good scholar? Yes, has been the reports. Was the knife in the lunch box or being carried in a purse? The reports vary. Was the knife a small kitchen paring knife, or weapon size? The reports say it was a small kitchen knife. We know the student was of an age which a reasonable parent would allow them to use the implement.
The issue is a strict prohibition on knives in school, and effective termination of education due to possession, whether purposeful, or inadvertent. From what is reported, the education decision makers may be personally liable for sanctions. Their actions are so egregious that the sovereign immunity shield may be pierced. Certainly the school system is vulnerable, they destroyed a person’s education for no good reason (preventing a real danger).
There was a time when ROTC students carried rifles on NY subways for drill team practice, an activity sponsored by the school board. In that age, expulsion for carrying a switch blade was accepted. Today, the US school system ranks almost dead last among advanced nations is all academic subjects. This disaster lies at the feet of school boards who have abandoned the mission of education.
U Wrote: Was the knife in the lunch box or being carried in a purse? The reports vary.
From a TV interview I saw on-line, it appears the lunch container (I’ll call it that, since from pictures it is obviously not exactly a box, but certainly not itself a purse) was INSIDE her regular purse. Apparenlt, when leaving for school that morning she grabbed the lunch container she THOUGHT was her own, stuffed it into her purse, and went to school.
During the course of the drug search at school (and I can understand how she could get caught up in that without any prior accusations, unlike some people posting on this and the similar earlier thread, since I served in the military and if one person is caught in the command, the entire command is searched/tested), the teacher removed the lunch container from her purse, searched the container and found the knife which Ashley did not even know she had in there, put the knife aside and then searched the remainder of the purse. It was only following the search of the purse that the teacher then reported finding the paring knife, along with an apple and lunch.
Of course, I wasn’t there the day this happened, so until more difinitive facts can be released, I have to go by what I have heard in the media and on-line, and everything I have heard so far exonerates Ashley Smithwick and makes the school/school superintendant look like complete fools as they try and turn this situation around into their favor.
The Sad Case of a Student being Schoolboarded
If the facts are that a container with lunch in it also had a knife in it and was found in school, the question is who is to blame. If the lunch had not been nibbled-on then it should relieve the “accused” of responsibility of knowledge of the contents of the lunch container.
If a family member takes responsibility for the mix-up of the lunch containers, for which the “accused” had no knowledge of the contents, that should end the accusation for the “accused” and transfer responsibility to the family member. That seems an easy way out if the above facts were correct.
The world can then watch how the school management penalizes the guilty parent, perhaps required training in TSA enhanced pat-downs, and Federal instruction in use of Magic Markers. And the decision making in this affair appears to be way above the grade level of all of the decision-makers involved. Just think what their real-time actions would be if a real hostage situation ever occurred.
My daughter went to a esteemed private school. They held a fund raiser with a walking/jogging event. They called it the “wog-a-thon”. Being as half the school was comprised of the sons and daughters of East Indians, I suggested to the school head this was an unfortunate label for the event.. I had to explain, in some detail, why, and it came up in the conversation his background in teaching was world history.!
How much money does it take to fire 7 teachers in LA? Try $3.5 million.
Guess how long it takes for a public school teacher in California to be granted tenure? Prepare to be shocked: It takes two years, without so much as a substantive review.
Facing enormously powerful teacher’s unions, Governor Schwarzenegger’s efforts to change the tenure rules (extending the tenure threshold to five years) have–to date–been resoundingly defeated. Unions like the California Teachers Association have spent millions to keep the two-year tenure rule in place. The Wall Street Journal took time to count the cost of this today:
“Even when bad schools close, which happens all too rarely, teachers from those schools take jobs at replacement schools or are sent to work at other schools in the system. And union contracts typically allow those with seniority to bump younger colleagues from other schools, even if the younger teachers are getting better classroom results. […] It’s not impossible to get rid of bad teachers, but it’s extremely hard and expensive. A report this month in LA Weekly noted that in the past decade the Los Angeles Unified School District “spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance.“ The result? Four were fired, two others were paid large settlements and one was reinstated. The paper also reported that 32 underperforming teachers were initially targeted for removal “but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight.”” So as governors across the country look for areas to cut their state budgets, they need look no further than the seemingly innocuous line item “Education”. Turns out, education’s budget has nothing to do with children (at least according to the teachers unions). As it is, the California Teachers Association is asking everyone to save the date (March 3th) and “Stand up for Schools.” “It’s time everyone paid their fair share,” opines their plea that students and parents not let the state cut education funding. We agree that it’s time for everyone to pay their fair share. It’s just that teachers who shouldn’t even be in a classroom are paying no price at all. And California’s children and their parents are paying the full price.
Nobody has heard about the kid being suspended last year (possibly twice) for marijuana possession. Nobody had heard about the kid bringing a baseball bat to school for a fight where she ended up with a broken arm. Nobody has heard about her getting in trouble for having tobacco on campus. The news makes it out like this her first time getting in any trouble. That’s because the school legally cannot comment on it due to privacy rules. The knife thing was the last straw for a student with a string of both school and criminal infrations. When she and her parents agree to release ALL the information which led to the school’s decision to ban her from campus, then we’ll all know “the rest of the story”.
Funny. I don’t recall reading anywhere the slightest rumor that this student was ever suspended (not even once) for marajana, getting into a fight with a baseball bat or breaking any arms. And I’m absolutely sure, in this present culture of sensationalism, when the media jumps on any rumor no matter how hard to believe just because it might bring in another rating point, even if later on the rumor is proven false, that were even a single other student at this high school to even whisper such an accusation it would be all over the media, school record release or not. Especially since as a white anglo-saxon female with apparently good enough grades to be taking college level courses she doesn’t fall into the protected affermative-action minority media protection program.
Psst. Hey Knows.
Learn something:
http://ncguns.blogspot.com/2011/01/ashley-smithwick-and-paring-knife.html
Ok, there have been developments:
http://www2.nbc17.com/news/2011/jan/05/nbc-17-looks-school-records-lee-county-student-sus-ar-669340/
http://www2.nbc17.com/news/2011/jan/04/lee-county-superintendent-talks-student-suspended–ar-667042/
http://www2.nbc17.com/news/2011/jan/04/lee-county-commissioner-says-superintendent-making-ar-664885/
I don’t think the school was “circling the wagons” at all. They were just following due process.