Arkansas Blog

It baffles my mind that school administrators do not understand the concept of free speech. And in this case, free speech likely done outside the school grounds.

I've been watching Arkansas' petty school administrators trample anything remotely related to student Civil Liberties for some time; and the courts have allowed them unconscionable leeway. But this piece-of-crap legislation takes the cake. To the everyday petty administrator "substantial disruption of the orderly operation of the school or educational environment" translates to 'I can do whatever the hell my Constitutionally ignorant self dictates.'

Come on legislators...stop this madness. Our young people deserve better.

Its all BS. If this bill passes how long before some administrator tries to shut down this blog. With comments made by those who could be students against schools, would this not disrupt the educational process. If this passes next schools will be trying to prevent all speech against them.

These misfit kids using the web to poke fun at their teachers will be the leaders and rich geeks of tomorrow. You will never get anywhere in this world if you are afraid to challenge authority. Especially stupid authority.

I try to be supportive of the schools and teachers, but horsecrap such as this bill tells me that they are all a bunch of yahoos, undeserving of my support or my respect. Where are the teachers and the AEA on this bill? Do they approve of it? If not, why aren't they speaking out against it? I hope the ACLU nails the first principal or superintendent that tries to use this law to silence legal free speech and causes substantial cost to the district. That's the only thing they understand. The Constitution is obviously beyond their comprehension.

Art Levine's report ''Educating School Leaders' provides one explanation for low quality school administrators. A quote from the Executive Summary hit the nail on the head:

"Many university-based school
leadership programs are engaged in a "race to the bottom," in which they compete for students by lowering standards and offering faster and less demanding degrees."

http://tinyurl.com/26k4jt

The only thing Levine's report left out about the education of school administrators was the potluck buffet table at the back of the classroom each week.

There are far too many ignorant administrators out there, agreed. This case does seem to have started because a principal got his feelings hurt. One of the greatest tradtions any free society has is that of satire. I teach it, I encourage it, I model it for students in a way hopefully that encourages respect and appreciation for a good sense of humor. In other words, I'm all about free speech.

However, this debate is overlooking some of the serious problems schools confront. We're not talking about pinning a "kick me" sign on a teacher. Check with your kid's school and see if there aren't some serious instances of terroristic threatening by kids and even kids' families against other kids. Times have changed dramactically since you were in school, I promise you. That does not mean I favor going after kids for what they write on the internet. In the old days, they wrote the same stuff on paper. I just think you need to be fully aware of the crazies and the danger your public school employees face every day. It's not just the one fairly odd family from over by the county line anymore.

publicschoolsrus said: "Check with your kid's school and see if there aren't some serious instances of terroristic threatening by kids and even kids' families against other kids."

No doubt this is true. Might even be some threats issued against ole Mrs. Snickerdoodle. Might be more serious than "I hope the ole bag gets hit by a bus." But there are already laws which cover such threats whether they are addressed to students or teachers, laws which should be enforced by police officers.
(On the other hand, I might be likely to dismiss an irate father's "threat" to beat a senior boy to a pulp if he comes around again after bringing his freshman daughter home drunk or stoned after 2 a.m. And yes, daughter is culpable too.)

To beg your pardon, publicschoolsrus, you must have not been a geeky skinny little boy who was prone to dressing in all one color often enough to land on the radar of kids that I'm quite sure grew up to be Republicans and Greenwood school administrators.

If you had been a geeky kid....ok...like me...you would have spent the 60s getting your ass whipped at school on a daily basis. No...I was not killed, obviously, nor was I ever hospitalized.

But on many occasion I spent the night shivering in fear in my little bed because one or more of the school bullies had promised me a long and torturous death if they caught me at school the next day.

My father was John Wayne and about 8 feet tall. He always thought I was queer, so I knew better than to go tell him that ______ was going to kill me the next day after math class. He would have laughed at me and suggested that perhaps indeed I was a nerd who deserved a good ass kicking.....maybe that'll finally make you a man...boy! Oh lord...I can still hear him now.

So 3 or 4 or 5 days a week I'd take my nattily dressed self to school and live in constant fear of at least 3 families of slop-headed boys that had promised on many occasions to end my short unhappy nerdy little life. Did a teacher ever notice what was going on? NOPE Did the Yeats reading Principal ever notice what was going on? NOPE!

And of course there was no help-line or website like www.bulliesbekickingmyass.com So I just had to grit my teeth and head off to school and take what was coming to me.

You're right about one thing...times have changed because never once did I think of selecting a gun from my father's arsenal of weapons and putting the Scamardos in their grave. But the reason I didn't ever take a gun to school was 99% based on the knowledge that my father would have honest to God killed me if I had touched one of his guns.

Will Princess Walters bill change any of the bullying I've describe? NOPE! It's only designed to rob us of free speech and keep the news of one of the 27 intercity squabbles always going on in the City of Greenwood off teenager websites. It's a silly bill and no amount of amending will fix it.

Dancing for cancer will not shrink one tumor in the land. Taking free speech away will not deter one bully. If we're no smarter than this....no wonder our kids are in trouble.

All I'm saying is that there are 2 big pictures here. One involves free speech which is sacred. The other involves the right to feel safe at school--also sacred. The "threats" and the chatter may get investigated but the police are often tied up with other crimes. Schools need some muscle too. And I've never been able to understand how schools are supposed to help enforce a restraining order that intends to kid A 500 feet from kid B??? Class changes? Cafeteria? Maybe the problem will get better when the generation of kids raised watching Jerry Springer takes on jobs, rent, car payments and otherwise grows up in general. But in the meantime, we gotta do something. The problems are getting out of hand.

DBI, you misinterpret my intention. I am not in favor of limiting free speech in ANY way. I do not support tracking down what kids are saying on the internet. I am saying that when one kid's free speech threatens harm to another student, the schools need to be able to intercede. There's a responsibility that comes with the right.

And by the way, I was indeed a very geeky little kid and even geekier teenager but when _____ backed me against a locker and threatened me, I told _____ to back off or I would kick _____'s ass. Not every bully will back down. I'm not in favor of Walter's bill. I'm only asking for people to realize that schools have a duty to keep all kids safe. And we're trying. I could care less about teachers and administrators getting made fun of. If we did a better job of teaching and allowing appropriate humor, maybe kids wouldn't be so stressed out. But some of these people are frightened and with good reason.

If a student at UALR sitting in his house (or in his car in the Kroger parking lot) e-mails or text-messages a threatening message to another UALR student, is UALR responsible for enforcing the laws regarding this act?

Who knows. Probably depends on whether their connection was caused by UALR or was an existing relationship but that's for a lawyer to decipher. The law doesn't require anyone to attend college but it's compulsory for kids to attend high school. We do have many in fact who are ordered by a judge to be in school.

OK, class. Who out there can define non sequitur?

It's simple Pavel. Childe_Roland_to_the_Dark_Tower_Came calls them "misfit kids" others call them bullies. They're really all just kids. But more and more of these kids have problems and don't cope with them well so they create havoc at school by threatening and harrassing others. It's pretty well agreed upon that the horrible incidents of murder at school were committed by these "misfits."

The argument is where the school's responsibility and boundaries are. Schools have a unique mission to educate and protect kids. Apparently in Greenwood, they think that means telling kids they can't make fun of authority figures. Most of us here agree that first amendment rights must be protected as well. The struggle is how to do that when one's free speech is threatening to another. How far can schools go? What should they do? Kids are required by law to be there so shouldn't schools at least guarantee them some sort of safety and freedom from hasrrassment by other kids? Can't we do that AND let them have free speech? I think so. I just don't think most people realize the severity of some of the "bullying" that occurs.

Given a choice...I'd rather take my chances with someone emailing me or text messaging a threat to my body, than have it delivered face to face.

I'm always promising a Bush beating on here, but I might chicken out if GWB and his 5000 man bodyguard showed up on my porch. Nah....I at least make one good lunge in the name of my darling kids and all those who have come home from Iraq in a body bag.

Princess Walters bill is hogwash as Cheney would say...it will not stop bullying, it will only trip up some non-Stepford Greenwood-ite on down the line.

My kids are cool and so we've been very lucky to have not had a problem with them being bullied....must get it from their Mom.

But remembering very well the kids who did the bullying when I was in school and remembering the bullied classmates who wound up blowing their heads off later in life, I have to say that alert teachers, parents and school personnel could save our schools from the tragedies we've seen in the news the last 20 years.

I can tell you today what kids I knew had a problem many years ago. One of my classmates is locked up for the rest of time...and thank Allah! He was nuts in junior high. The kid that put the number 2 pencil completely thru the eyes of the baby bunny in the 1st grade at Easter time is no doubt already dead or in prison for serial murders.

One of my least favorite bullies has spent his entire life bullying and in trouble and now that he's sick, I can't wait to see his obit in the paper.

My point is.....if someone had been paying attention in Colorado, the Columbine massacre would have never happened. I know kids act crazy....but their classmates can tell you right now who really is and whose just playing around.

If you're a parent and you don't know your kids are gathering guns and planning an attack on the school......good lord...you're no parent at all. I can look across the room and tell if my kid's mad or upset....but you have to take a moment from your busy day to look across the room in the first place.

There's a bunch of not looking going around today, at school and at home. Our schools have security cameras all over....but it appears no one monitors them.

I know teachers have their hands full.....but along with the parents they are the front line in school safety and in preventing a kid from being tortured by bullies or worse. We're waiting precious time and resources on Walters bad bill.

Talking and blocking websites won't work. Everyone has to do the hard work of paying attention and in order to do that you have to quit thinking about yourself all the time.

Too bad all parents aren't like DBI...for so, so many reasons.

I do not believe that Rep. Walters' bill is intended to curb school bullying. I believe it is intended to give school administrators a supposed legal basis for going after kids who use their private computers on their private property during non-school hours to create Web-based material that lampoons and, therefore, offends those administrators. If a person (student) breaks the law by issuing threats, the civil authorities should enforce the laws that are broken, or the offended school authority can take his or her complaint to civil court. School authorities are not law enforcement authorities.

This ill-conceived bill will probably become law, and a school administrator (probably from Greenwood) will try to go after a student who has caused him or her distress by publishing something on the Internet. The ACLU will take the case to court and win. The school district will have to cover all expenses associated with the court action. You tax money at work.

>The ACLU will take the case to court and win. The school district will have to cover all expenses associated with the court action. You tax money at work.<

good summary Pavel.

Btw what's to keep a young person in Greenwood school from arranging with another y person in a Michigan or Nevada school from setting up a website which made-up-names from Greenwood can use to post their stuff? So how damn lame can Walters be ? It is after all an Arky law and would hardly be enforceable across state lines.

Thanks for the support, Lwood. Examples of situations that demonstrate that this is a bad bill are too numerous to list. Rep. Walters and her bill are an unfortunate joke, but school bullying is not. If the Greenwood schools are serious about eliminating bullying, there are school-wide programs that work. But this bill is not about eliminating bullying; it is about giving certain school administrators a tool to go after their teenage tormentors. As someone else has suggested, legislators who vote to approve this bill should be required to post a bond to cover the law suits that will result.

It's little things like this that go on daily in Greenwood that Princess Walters wants to keep from appearing on the Internet. Fist fights on the city square are as common as bird droppings. In Greenwood they love Jesus, but they hate each other.

Mayor Target Of Civil Lawsuit

By Mary L. Crider
Thursday, February 1, 2007 10:07 AM CST
TIMES RECORD . MCRIDER@SWTIMES.COM

GREENWOOD - Greenwood's new mayor faces a constitutional challenge from the former mayor.

Former mayor Garry Campbell filed a civil lawsuit in Sebastian County Circuit Court's Greenwood Division late Tuesday alleging that the current mayor, Ken Edwards Jr., has usurped the position.

Campbell's suit, filed by attorney Mark Horoda of Fort Smith, points to Edwards' expunged 1996 felony convictions for theft of property and forgery in Washington County and states that, under the Arkansas Constitution, Edwards is not qualified to hold an elected office in the state.

The state Constitution states: "No person hereafter convicted of embezzlement of public money, bribery, forgery or other infamous crime shall be eligible to the General Assembly or capable of holding any office of trust or profit in this State."