So…how would you like it if you got a call from the kid’s grade school while you were at the office:
“Please come pick up little Ignatius. We’ve had a murder here.”
Noooo kidding. That’s just about what parents here in the’Hood and environs heard today.
La Maya and I met for lunch today, at an old favorite Phoenix standard, a place that We Who Were Parents used to frequent when our urchins were preschool age. In the course of conversation, she remarked that Feeder Street E/W, which runs from Main Drag West through the ‘Hood to the freeway, is said to be closed, because there was a murder just outside MittelAmerica School, which sits on the Hood’s western border. The corpse was found outside the blocks of prison-gray apartments that border the school on the its south side, a few yards west of Conduit of Blight Blvd.
Eeep! thought I. But then not much more of it, since…yeah, that’s life in the Big City.
An hour or so passed as we munched and socialized. Then she went on her way.
I took my ailing laptop over to Best Buy (again!!!!!) and forked it over to the techs. So often do I surface over there at the service desk that His Cuteness recognized me. Alas, though: he was born about 20 years too late.
From there I drove homeward (and homeward…homeward…homeward…) through the unholy surface-street traffic. Made it back to the house. Having no pistol in the car (GOT to fix that little lapse!!!), I inspected the doors and windows before entering the Funny Farm. No sign of any fleeing murderers.
Thank Heaven for small favors, hm?
The school — a grades 6-8 middle-school campus — was roped off with yellow crime-scene tape. So was Feeder Street E/W, which east of Conduit of Blight leads to the Post Office (so much for mailing your bills today, eh?).
Just imagine:
- Your child’s school wrapped in police crime scene tape.
- A dead body right across the street from the campus, next to the slum apartments that border the school on the south.
- Cops ambling about here and ambling about there…
For the love of GOD!
For the love of God, indeed. I still can’t get over the 6-year-old boy who shot his teacher, Abby Zwerner, in Newport News, VA. earlier this year. I can understand having to fear a 16-year-old, even a 10-year-old. But having to watch your back around someone who’s only in the damn first grade?!?!? Apparently the still unidentified child had been threatening her for months. One of his parents had to accompany him to school every time. Nobody came to school with him on the day of the shooting. Why is a child that messed up attending school anyway?
The schools have become mental institutions, and teachers are as much social workers as instructors. Maybe that’s why so many young people who show up in our freshman comp classes can’t write a simple sentence: K-12 teachers are so busy wrangling social and mental problems that they don’t have time to teach academic subjects.
If I had kids today, I would seriously consider home-schooling. In these parts, there’s a large home-schooling movement. One day the subject came up in one of my 300-level classes. This particular campus caters to adult students, and so most of the classmates are working adults. Turns out several of them were home-schooling their kids, and when the subject arose in class discussion, ears perked up. Turns out MANY of the people in the section were interested in home-schooling.
It’s difficult because these days two salaries are needed for most families to get by. But these folks made the sacrifice, so that one parent could stay home and educate the kids. It’s also possible to hire teachers to come to your house and coach the kiddies. Those who remarked on it said their kids passed the required standardized tests with no problem.
In our parts, it turns out that public schools are required to allow home-schooled kids to participate in extracurricular activities, so many of these kids were in bands, athletic teams, and school clubs. They just didn’t go to class on the local campus.
Given the pervasiveness of drugs and of mental health issues in the classrooms, I’m afraid that if we couldn’t have afforded a private/parochial school, home-schooling is definitely something we would have considered.
Good question. And where the He!! was the school administration, if these threats had been known for months? I don’t understand why anyone goes into teaching: a career in which you risk your life for peanuts.