Rev. Dante Murphy provided a comment to my article entitled “Poor (No) Leadership at Cleveland County Schools!!! Kids in Command–Walkout When They Want to !” that presented another well thought out and well described viewpoint that I believe should be shared through a separate article. Rev. Murphy also alluded to the fact that those supporting this so called walkout protest have abrogated parental and sound thinking adult influence and that we have reasonably protected courthouses, military bases and prisons, why not schools and our children?
First, a reprint of Rev. Murphy’s comment is shown below:
Rev. Dante A. Murphy
March 15, 2018 at 5:47 pm
Robert,
Activism is a great tool for bringing about social change and maximizing the outcomes and benefits of conflict. The debate spurred as a result of the Parkland shootings is valid and warrants the highest degree of activism. However, the thought of minor children engaging in civil disobedience should be both frowned upon and prohibited by sound thinking adults. At the least, parental consent should have been given by parents prior to any child under the age 18 being allowed to just walk out of class. Another option would have been to make the “walkout” a school-sponsored event. It is my guess neither of these requirements were employed. In the “old days” children were prohibited from getting into “grown folks” business and parents were the protectors and advocates for their children. Politics on both sides have become a dirty game. Stooping to the point of using children as pawns in politics equals that of a vindictive parent who uses a child to hurt or get back at the other spouse.
I am also confused as to why we are hell-bent on gun control as opposed to people control. We should take lessons from the old “Lean On Me” movie that depicted a New Jersey principle, Joe Clark, who used “extreme” measures to keep drugs and drug dealers out of the school. We have implemented measures to protect our courthouses, military bases, and prisons, but fail to implement similar measures to protect our children.
Now, let’s add some “sound thinking adult” discussion:
1. School Safety and Security:
Teachers and most school personnel have their training and experience grounded in education, not school safety and security. So, why should we entrust school safety and security to CCS? a task they are totally not qualified to perform. The answer to that question is we should NOT use CCS personnel to develop school safety and security plans and protocol, much less have them in a lead position. Especially since CCS has stupidly adopted the liberal Democrat no guns for anybody mentality that does not interface with the reality of the situation. I.E. Hiding students in a closet does little to stop the bullets of an active shooter.
2. Implementing a school safety and security program.
Since I live directly in front of the Fallston Elementary School, I consider myself a part of the first line of defense for Fallston School. I did a walkdown of the adjoining school property to determine security vulnerabilities. I found plenty. Then I did some thinking on how to mitigate those vulnerabilities. With a little more thinking, I decided to keep that information off line so as to not provide useful information to potential terrorists or deranged nut cases with a stolen gun.
I did make a decision to describe what I believe are the priorities of a security plan. Those priorities are:
a. Keep the impending threat as far away from the entrance to the school front doors as possible before detection. This allows more warning time and implementation of defensive measures.
b. Develop defensive measures in a multiple and sequential fashion. That is lay out defenses such that an intruding threat has to overcome multiple barriers in order to get to the school front door. This allows for more time for the “Fallston Militia” and law enforcement to intercept an intruding threat prior to the threat gaining access inside the school to do harm to our children.
c. Develop and install multiple barriers just inside the school entrances to slow down the intrusion of a threat so internal school defense assets can better deploy against an intruding threat.
d. Develop defensive assets within the school interior and adequately train and equip those defensive assets.
e. Develop student defensive plans that allows either fleeing the building or hunkering down in “hardened” areas inside the school.
f. On a site specific basis determine what detection and defensive devices (alarms) are required for the school safety and security plan, purchase and install. Train accordingly.
Folks, If I can come up with these ideas in such a short period of time, then a security expert can fill in the blanks. Make sure our elected officials know that they are expected to do what is necessary to develop and implement a school safety and security plan within three weeks or they will be replaced on election day. Doing nothing or just gabbing about this is not an option.
See you on election day. The primary election day is May 8 and the General Election is November 6, 2018.
