You cannot sue the City or the Police for not responding to a call for help or not coming to your aid or not protecting you. You are responsible for your own protection and that of your children. The schools are in place of parents and do have a duty to the children to use reasonable means to protect them from forseeable danger on campus, to and from and at school functions. The city doesn’t even have to have police patrols.

Once the school is on notice of a hazard affecting the kids in these settings they have to react reasonably. They may not have to provide escorts to and from school but they may never remain silent about known hazards when any reasonable person would have at least warned or taken other steps to abate the hazard.

And if you really care about your charges you don’t need classroom training to react. If these administrators failed to react maybe it was because they were forbidden to do so or thought they were by school policies not disclosed to us. It’s not unusual for schools to secretly forbid or discourage police calls or child abuse reports. It’s also not unusal (normal even) for medical facilities to forbid revelation of misconduct or even criminal activity except to closed channels. In other words Nurses are forbidden in writing under pain of firing or worse from telling you or the police about any number of negligent or criminal things done to you they learn about. That may seem off the subject but in defense of these administrators or teachers their hands may have been tied by bad school protocol interfering with reporting.

Such policies are common when the customers are perceived as disposable.

I am not surprised at your response and the information about who is running the OUSD school in question that failed and neglected to warn families about a predator lurking nearby having approached a students. My comments stand.

Union Supporter’s example of what a real school does when it’s students are threatened is classic. This is nothing new, warnings like this have been (quickly) published by decent schools public and private for 100 years.

The staff at the suspect school appear to be so far gone from proper concern that they would utter excuses why they didn’t act. That’s what people who don’t care do. They cannot help the way they don’t feel. To their credit they may well be acting under secret orders from OUSD limiting when and how they are ever permitted to publish family notices and warnings. I don’t actually point at them individually since I can’t possibly know the working conditions they must have to live under working in a failed school system such as OUSD. And I’m very impressed if the bathrooms are clean since that is a very important indicator of the care and concern resident in any particular school.

But.

Collectively, thie OUSD school and school system are not caring for the safety of the children and the white schools do. There, I’ve said it.

There are different standards going on in Calif public education and much of the differences are tied to the decisions of the operators to pacify the minority populations in education by not shaking them up or letting on to them that they are not being treated as well as or as importantly as some others who are. The cardinal rule is not “upsetting” anybody. Or maybe it’s don’t pee on them if they’re on fire. I don’t know. Sometimes words fail me. But I do know this kind of treatment when it’s going on.

What we are complaining here couldn’t happen in a white school district. It would be unthinkable. And that’s how I see it. They react to even more discreet threats to their kids such as some wierdo on Facebook -because they consider every one of their students more valuable and more important than you-know-who.

Tell me how I’m wrong. I’d feel better if I were.

OUSD deserves much scorn for this one – if it’s true. I wasn’t there. I’m only going on the thread we are discussing. I hope this isn’t true. But I am not surprised.

I believe we do not care in the same way. We care in a way that first protects adults, then protects adults financially and then finally protects children. I am attaching a notice that middle school families in Lafayette received via email and by physical paper within one day of a student bringing this to an adult’s attention. This is what a functioning district that truly cares about its students BEFORE caring about money or before caring about adults in the case where students MAY be in danger – before an actual danger exists:

Hello Stanley Families-

We have recently learned about an individual whom we are concerned about on the Facebook social networking website. Please ask your student if they have a Facebook account, and if they have been invited recently to be a friend by someone they don’t know.

Our concerns regarding this individual are several:
· Students have no idea who this individual is, and large numbers of current and former Stanley students have “friend”ed this stranger
· This individual continues to make friend requests of our current and former students
· Rumors are that one of the Stanley administrators is the secret identity of this individual (not true)
· Suggestions are also being made that the individual may be a predator
· By “friending” this individual, students have made their own Facebook profiles open to a stranger.

We are in touch with Facebook administrators and the Lafayette Police Department to explore all the options available to us regarding this page. If your child has a Facebook account, we strongly recommend that you use this opportunity to discuss cyber safety issues with regards to online strangers and predators. We also recommend sitting with your child reviewing your child’s Facebook “friends”. We think it advisable that they remove any “friends” they don’t personally know. Remember, a Facebook “friend” has access to virtually all the postings and profile information your child has on his or her site. Thanks again for helping us to make all our students safe and responsible.

Please call or email me with any concerns or questions. If you have any information about this person, please don’t hesitate to contact us here in the office at 927-3530.

David Schrag
Principal, Stanley Middle School
3455 School Street
Lafayette, CA. 94549
925-927-3531
925-283-1797 Fax
dschrag@lafsd.k12.ca.us

And, apparently, human beings are omniscient as well; otherwise, how could the prepubescent Nextset possibly know that parents were alerted to “every” incident near his elementary school? Oh, right, those were the “good old days,” so everything was better back then — that’s what “good old” means, after all.