You’re killing me Smalls… really… you’re killing me.

[maumann]

Or George Bush's "Mission Accomplished."

My wife, also a retired schoolteacher, has never heard of anything close to what the family describes. And she handled inclusions on a regular basis. The stories she tells of the ones that went off the rails -- including the kid who stapled his arm to his desk -- made me want to have a baseball bat handy when coming to read to her class.

 

[Neutral Corner]

The child's family claims he has an "acute disability" and there was an action plan to have one parent in the classroom with him at all times. My wife, an elementary school teacher, said she's never heard of an action plan that involved the parents having to be at the school with the kid. All I can figure is the "acute disability" was DSM-certified psychopathy, but if that's the case, why in the world wasn't this kid already in a mental hospital?

The fact that the family refers to an "action plan" and not an IEP makes me suspicious from the jump. I'm not hearing the word "accomodations" either.

 

[Scout]

Republican fork up - every one should have guns.

Democrat fork up - education is a right.

Education should be a privilege that can be taken away. The problem is, in the past, it was taken away too easily and for the wrong reasons.

This kid should no way be part of public education. The problem is no one has the balls to say it before he guns down a teacher. You threaten to set a teacher on fire? Good bye. That kid is your problem. We won't give a penny to educate them. Maybe now parents will think about what their sending to school.

I know this sounds serious and crazy, but what we are doing right now isn't working. Not. Even. Close.

Or schools are created for behavior problems and parents don't get months of hemming a hawing. You hit a teacher? Screw Up Middle. Gun? Hit a staff member? Multiple major referrals? Screw Up High. No questions asked.

 

[Twirling Time]

My dad taught me how to "carry the one" in second grade and my teacher bitched my dad out (after she more or less bitched me out) more for working her corner than anything else.

 

[outofplace]

Republican fork up - every one should have guns.

Democrat fork up - education is a right.

Education should be a privilege that can be taken away. The problem is, in the past, it was taken away too easily and for the wrong reasons.

This kid should no way be part of public education. The problem is no one has the balls to say it before he guns down a teacher. You threaten to set a teacher on fire? Good bye. That kid is your problem. We won't give a penny to educate them. Maybe now parents will think about what their sending to school.

I know this sounds serious and crazy, but what we are doing right now isn't working. Not. Even. Close.

Or schools are created for behavior problems and parents don't get months of hemming a hawing. You hit a teacher? Screw Up Middle. Gun? Hit a staff member? Multiple major referrals? Screw Up High. No questions asked.

You lost me there, in part because it would be handing Republicans exactly the sort of tool they need to gut public education. The minute you start picking and choosing who has a right to an education, people like DeSantis will use that to steal it from even more children who absolutely deserve it. If you open that door, you will see it taken away too easily and for the wrong reasons, to borrow your phrase.

That doesn't mean every child deserves to be in a mainstream public school. Some need to be in specialized programs that can not only give them the help they need but also handle them if they do something dangerous.

 

[Batman]

Republican fork up - every one should have guns.

Democrat fork up - education is a right.

Education should be a privilege that can be taken away. The problem is, in the past, it was taken away too easily and for the wrong reasons.

This kid should no way be part of public education. The problem is no one has the balls to say it before he guns down a teacher. You threaten to set a teacher on fire? Good bye. That kid is your problem. We won't give a penny to educate them. Maybe now parents will think about what their sending to school.

I know this sounds serious and crazy, but what we are doing right now isn't working. Not. Even. Close.

Or schools are created for behavior problems and parents don't get months of hemming a hawing. You hit a teacher? Screw Up Middle. Gun? Hit a staff member? Multiple major referrals? Screw Up High. No questions asked.

The kid is 6. Not a troubled high school kid. Not even a middle schooler who should know better. He's 6.
When a 6-year-old threatens to set a teacher on fire, how do you decide if it's the same sort of temper tantrum all kids have at that age or a serious threat they have the capability and desire to carry out? Who decides that this kid is being a stupid, out of control 6-year-old who can be set straight with some harsh and sudden discipline, or an unrepentant psychopath who needs to be denied an education and locked away forever?
I'm not exactly a bleeding heart here, and even I think that's too young an age to make that call. And if things like zero tolerance policies have taught us anything, it's that once you make it a firm policy — or even a viable option — it'll probably be applied broadly and stupidly.

 

[Twirling Time]

The kid didn't decide to act out in a vacuum. He got it from somewhere. He got a gun from somewhere, too. His parents better call Saul.

 

[Scout]

The kid is 6. Not a troubled high school kid. Not even a middle schooler who should know better. He's 6.
When a 6-year-old threatens to set a teacher on fire, how do you decide if it's the same sort of temper tantrum all kids have at that age or a serious threat they have the capability and desire to carry out? Who decides that this kid is being a stupid, out of control 6-year-old who can be set straight with some harsh and sudden discipline, or an unrepentant psychopath who needs to be denied an education and locked away forever?
I'm not exactly a bleeding heart here, and even I think that's too young an age to make that call. And if things like zero tolerance policies have taught us anything, it's that once you make it a firm policy — or even a viable option — it'll probably be applied broadly and stupidly.

The process of a parent in the classroom at all times with him, as forked up as it may be, would have been step four or five of a process that took months of trail and error that probably started a few weeks after the kid entered kindergarten. This is not a bad week.

And this kid is one in a 100,000, but the schools, as set up today, are not equipped to handle this child and family.

 

[Scout]

And every parent of every child in that class should be getting a lawyer, too.

 

[Songbird]

When a 6-year-old threatens to set a teacher on fire, how do you decide if it's the same sort of temper tantrum all kids have at that age or a serious threat

 

[outofplace]

The process of a parent in the classroom at all times with him, as forked up as it may be, would have been step four or five of a process that took months of trail and error that probably started a few weeks after the kid entered kindergarten. This is not a bad week.

And this kid is one in a 100,000, but the schools, as set up today, are not equipped to handle this child and family.

As someone else already mentioned, the parents referring to an action plan rather than an IEP suggests significant behavioral issues, likely indicating that he did not belong in a traditional classroom. That does not mean a six-year-old forfeited the right to an education. We don't know everything that led up to the shooting. We also don't know if the school district had the resources to put him in the sort of non-traditional environment where he belonged. It is likely the school district and the parents all screwed up here. They failed the teacher. They failed the shooter. They absolutely failed his classmates. You are damn right that if I was the parent of one of those other children, I'd be in touch with a lawyer already and I would be looking into other educational options for my child.

None of that justifies picking and choosing which children don't deserve an education in the way you argued above. A policy like that doesn't just open up the potential for abuse. It pretty much guarantees it.

 

[Batman]

The process of a parent in the classroom at all times with him, as forked up as it may be, would have been step four or five of a process that took months of trail and error that probably started a few weeks after the kid entered kindergarten. This is not a bad week.

And this kid is one in a 100,000, but the schools, as set up today, are not equipped to handle this child and family.

I agree that this was that 1 in 100,000 problem child that everybody has nightmares about. Also agree that the parents didn't do a good job of parenting, to say the least. Nature and nurture together are the worst possible combination.
But the idea you laid out in the other post would treat him — and probably hundreds or thousands of others, once the mechanisms are in place — like he's Michael Myers.