I’m working on a book about the #NeverAgain movement. I need to contact and interview some of the student leaders and survivors from Parkland, Florida who are working as activists. But I’m having trouble contacting them.

If you are in touch with any of these student activists, can you please let me know? I’m at rall.com/contact.

Thanks!

Ted

On March 14, students across the country are planning a walkout from their high schools in memory of the seventeen students killed in Florida in February.

This idea is dumb and dangerous.  It is when students are pouring out of the building, say as at dismissal time, that we are at our most vulnerable.  (Nicholas Cruz opened fire when students emerged from classes after he pulled an alarm.)  No one is blocking the doors.  Security guards and administrators are in the parking lots.  Something that administrators and police have overlooked can easily be exploited.  The opportunity to inflict a lot of harm is tremendous.

Unfortunately, for the next couple weeks, instead of supervising a learning environment, school officials will be planning for this walk-out.  They can’t say it’s not happening to thousands of high school students.  They don’t have a choice.  The entire student body cannot be suspended.  Yet it is hard to impose order on a social protest because, by definition, social protests are chaotic and disorderly.  Schools will just have to be as prepared as possible, but stopping an incident often hinges on luck.  The potential for a crisis is huge.

On March 14, I am going to lock my door and stay in my room.  Our union has advised us that walking out can be regarded as a form of protest or strike for which we can either be disciplined or terminated.

All the trouble is going to be outside anyway.  Very few adults will be supervising thousands of kids.

The walkout is a distraction from the school day.  Some kids probably do want to commemorate those who lost their lives in Florida.  Most just want to get out of school.  By letting kids walk out, we are empowering those not ready to handle power.  Encouraging this walkout is madness.

The walkout also publicly denies the school its authority.  When students are already having a protest on March 24, the March 14 walkout becomes hard to justify.  It becomes an issue of power and challenging those who would deny students power.  A walkout is, by definition, a provocation.  Students will be saying a great deal indeed when they get up and walk out.  This walkout will only make matters worse for schools and the discipline problems that they face on a daily basis.

If parents want to make a political point about guns, then they should come to the school and stand with their child for seventeen minutes.  If they really wanted to make an impact, they would ask their child to do seventeen nice things that day.  They would ask their child to say hello to seventeen classmates that they did not know.  Standing outside for seventeen minutes just puts on a show.

Otherwise, parents might want to consider protesting the protest and keeping their kids safe at home.  Call the school administrator to voice your concerns.

Or better yet, tell your child, “You’re a kid.”

Today I have an article in the Wall Street Journal. Titled “Civil War in the Democratic Party,” it’s an argument that the most potent – and ignored – force in American politics today is the populist left that supported Bernie Sanders. You can read the article here if you have a subscription but it’s behind a pay wall. However if you find the article via a link in Twitter (Hint: I tweeted it) you can read the whole thing.

The following is a guest blog post by an American high school teacher, a person I know, who wishes to remain anonymous. — Ted Rall

Nicholas Cruz got his gun legally.  So did Adam Lanza.  So did Steve Paddock.  So do most shooters.

Short of taking everyone’s guns, which is not going to happen and which will just drive the underground market for guns, what can society do about these disaffected kids who want to shoot up their schools?

The premise of the school where I teach is that we cannot prevent shootings; all we can do is minimize casualties.  Think about that for a moment and think about how far we are pulling back the line.  We are acknowledging that one day there will be a shooting, some kids will get shot and some will die.  There is no stopping it.

We train with that idea in mind.  We practice barricading the room and fighting back.  We discuss running away.  Gone are the lockdowns where we herd a class to the back of the room, turn off the lights and pretend we’re not there.

The FBI has told us that does not work.  All public schools in the United States have a security plan which is constantly being updated.  Administrators are in touch with the police.  FBI agents have probably met with your school’s officials.

Of course, in some public schools, kids routinely come into the building armed with guns and knives.  These kids know that people know who they are and that they’ll be caught.  They will finish their business out on the street.  These are the schools where we don’t want metal detectors.  We don’t want to disarm the people who can take an active shooter out.

I teach in one of these schools and have never felt unsafe.  Perhaps that’s foolishness.  Kids aren’t after me; they’re after each other.  Occasionally, someone gets unhinged.  One year, I had a kid whose computer kept getting unplugged by other students.  “I’m about to go full psycho!” he screamed.  Not a tad.  Not a smidge.  Full-on psycho.  The student was removed and later outplaced.

Teachers here carry distress buttons that are wired in to the police station so that a swat team can be dispatched immediately.  So far we have not used them.  My school has its problems, but it is in my hometown, where kids have too much money, parents don’t pay attention, and administrators brush problems under the rug that I would be afraid to teach.  Given what I know about public schools, I would not teach in an affluent one.  I’d find another way to make a living.

I don’t want to get shot. I’m not a hero and neither are my friends. As much as we admire men like Aaron Feis and Peter Wang, the two men who died saving others in Florida, I’m sorry parents, we are probably not those teachers.  We’re out.

And while the media rightly focuses attention on those two heroes, as well as myriad other issues related to the shooting, there is a big question that thus far has gone unexplored.

How did Nicholas Cruz get in that high school?

He had been expelled and was reported to the FBI.

A massive security breach occurred when Cruz walked into that building.  The school administration needs to do an investigation and be transparent about its findings.  If there was a breach in protocol, then someone needs to be fired, perhaps held criminally negligent.

Negligence is a massive liability so the school district will try to cover up any investigation if it heads in that direction. But someone needs to be accountable.

School districts need to be responsible for your child’s security.  So do you.  Pay attention to your kid and what he is up to just the way you pay attention to his academics and extracurricular activities.

Just as a responsible parent is involved in their child’s education, you will need to be involved in making sure your child’s school stays safe.

Have a look around the school building itself.  Walk around it.  Are there points of access where you can enter unobserved?  Are there doors propped open or unlocked?  Talk to your child.  They know these points as well as places to hide better than teachers.  They also know what kid might go “full-psycho” better than a teacher would.

Do you need photo I.D. to get in the building?  Are you escorted to and from your destination?  How many police officers does your school have?  Are there security guards at the entrances?  Does the school have cameras?  Do staff carry distress buttons?  Will administration let you sit in on the school safety committee and offer an opinion?  If not, why?

If, God forbid, there is a shooting, what happens?  Do you want your child running madly through the halls, trying to escape?  If you don’t want to arm the teachers, do you want them to have glass cutters to break the windows out and fold-up ladders for those not on a ground floor?

Are there things that you can do to improve your school’s security?  In a town adjacent to the one where I live, mothers take turns patrolling the perimeter of their child’s elementary school so that trouble does not enter the building.

These question matter not if someone wants to shoot up your child’s school, but when.