Historical Tidbits
by DONN BROOKS
Newspaper articles suggest that Hays CISD is little more than a hotbed of criminals. Throughout society we cluck our tongues and bemoan the terrible condition of our youth. I have heard it all my life. Today I rise to take up for our kids.
Indisputably we have problems.Throughout public education there are issues with insecure principals who were poor teachers when they were in the classroom; could not wait to get an administrative job, and do not know good teaching from bad. That much is a given, but I doubt the Hays district is any worse than other school districts.
Until 1984 principals had the general authority to suspend students from school. With House Bill 72, school districts were required to provide education to students who had disciplinary problems. So, we put all the miscreant students in one room with their friends. We expected that protocol to reverse disruptive conduct and when it failed, state officials turned a deaf ear to the argument that this aspect of House Bill 72 was just plain untenable.
Students go to school to learn, but socialization is a major part of life, and when students are given a three-day “vacation” they miss their friends. Romances get disrupted. Incentives to shape up appear. Sadly, the school district loses money from a loss in their Average Daily Attendance. So, to nobody’s surprise, we sell out to the almighty dollar and wind up hiring all sorts of staff to deal with miscreants.
I believe judicious suspensions will result in improved behavior. I recognize that risk of lawsuits threaten to impair the fiscal viability of school districts. School districts can no longer serve their students while under paralysis from fear of lawsuits that is generated by school lawyers. School lawyers have entirely too much influence on school policy. With the same law firm representing most Texas school districts, it is the lawyers of a single firm that are setting public education policy. This is repulsive.
Before buying into raw numbers, try seeing how many of the violations are committed by the same people over and over. We are not correcting behavior.
Zero tolerance has been found wanting although we continue the practice and paint all students with the same brush. We let Ross Perot convince us that “no pass no play” would solve all the problems of public education. Teachers knew that it was those who neither passed nor played that caused 90 percent of the trouble, but 1984 was a time when athletics were taking a hit and politics ruled the day.
Administrations and school boards do not want to pay political prices for mistreating local teachers, so they structure faculties that primarily reside outside the district. Teachers need to be part of the community. Many of our problems stem from itinerant teachers.
Memo to Hays CISD parents and citizens: don’t let anybody say we are raising a generation of thugs and criminals. That is not the case.
