Safety in Schools: Liberals Don’t “Get It”

From the Chicago Tribune, a story that shows that Chicago’s schools have problems similar to those in Milwaukee.

About 775 probationary teachers in Chicago public schools learned Friday they are losing their jobs in a purge that district leaders say could improve the quality of instruction in the system’s most challenged schools.

The teachers were dismissed for various reasons, but the most common was an inability to manage their classrooms. Probationary teachers include those who have been in the district less than five years and others who have worked for longer than that as full-time substitutes.

So those teachers were not competent, eh? They could not “manage their classrooms.”

But one has to wonder how many of them would be fine teachers if they did not have to face nasty discipline problems. How many of them will be fine teachers at some private or suburban school.

A lot of people with a talent for teaching lack the talents of a prison guard.

It might seem that any urban school district would like have the luxury of hiring teachers on the basis of their teaching abilities (rather than their ability to handle tough discipline problems), but some school boards and political activists don’t seem to want to help make the schools safer and more orderly.

Witness the brouhaha here in Milwaukee over the policy of allowing school personnel to handcuff students who are violent and out of control.

MILWAUKEE - The Milwaukee School Board has repealed a controversial handcuff policy that was approved just two week ago.

After a five-hour meeting, the board said “no” to allowing school safety aids to use plastic handcuffs on out of control students.

An emotional crowd of about 100 people attended the Tuesday night school board meeting. Most of them were opposed to using the cuffs.

Wendell Harris with the Milwaukee chapter of the NAACP refused to budge on the handcuff issue. “We will not rest until this issue is taken off the table,” Harris said. “There will be no compromise.”

James Jones told the board “the mental anguish would be greater than physically being cuffed.”

School Board President Peter Blewett, who opposed the handcuff idea, wants a “task force” instead.

So the NAACP and the white liberals on the School Board side with the disruptive students.

And good teachers, when the opportunity arises, leave the Milwaukee public system for places where the school administration sides with them -- which is the same thing as siding with the students who want to learn.