Texas Elementary School Shooting, as many as 22 dead, including Children

[Dezerte]

There are more certified teachers working in public schools than private over here. It probably depends on the country/state, because some don't spend money on education as much as others do.

[Dontrike]

Public education is an utter cesspit of a dumping ground anywhere. If you have any talent for instructing pupils you are in the private sector. For the sheer basic level of service they provide.

Woah! Look at all those sources to back up your claim! This is going to take me hours to get through.

[Breccia]

Well first:

I mean its 15 dollars an hour if you count the whole year. It isn't a whole year position.

Um...no, that's why I cited the $120 per day. Nobody said anything about a year, nor does the math involved require it. I...don't think you read the post. The post was about, how there are so few teachers, they're looking to hire a bunch more people as substitute teachers. You then said exactly that kind of person wasn't in high demand. The opposite of the facts on the table.

However, that said:

I have little sympathy for public education but it might need it's own thread.

I'm not gonna go into a tangent about one specific school system you have an issue with.

people with the bare minimum are not exactly saught after.

If you wanna ad nauseam this your free to.

You have no authority to speak on the American education system. While forum rules say I can't make fun of poor spelling or grammar, I can point out these are common mistranslation errors. ("saught" is not an autocorrect) You did not take part in the American education system.

I would also question why you decided to discuss the opposite of the facts in the field, then go on to express your lack of sympathy for people who were fucking shot at and killed, the entire point of this thread, and more directly, what @Kathranis posted about and my reply to it.

Take your own advice and make your own thread. We're talking about the Texas school shooting in this one, and related issues:

How some schools are addressing active shooter concerns after Uvalde

As more has come to light on one of the worst school shootings in U.S history -- most notably the shortcomings of the law enforcement response -- schools across the country are reexamining their active shooter plans and implementing new measures, from requiring clear backpacks to more controversial steps like arming teachers.

While active shooters in schools remain exceedingly rare, they are on the increase in recent years, federal data shows, and they have an outsized impact on perceptions of safety.

A Texas state legislature investigation into the Uvalde shooting found that while the elementary school had adopted security policies to ensure that exterior doors and internal classroom doors were locked during school hours, those protocols were mostly ignored.

The shooting in Uvalde -- in which the 18-year-old alleged gunman killed 19 students and two teachers -- and other recent school shootings also demonstrate the importance of measures to reduce student access to guns, including conversations on proper gun storage and "red flag laws," Rob Wilcox, federal legal director for the gun violence prevention organization Everytown for Gun Safety, told ABC News.

"To keep our schools safe and to keep our students safe, no matter where they are in the community, schools and community members really need to work together," Wilcox said.

Though schools may turn their focus to active shooter drills, Amy Klinger, founder of the Educator's School Safety Network, which provides schools with safety training and resources, advises that they take an "all-hazards approach" that takes into account other scenarios that may be more likely to happen, such as violent fights that do not involve firearms, issues with noncustodial parents and severe weather.

Ah yes, "duck and cover". To be fair, I wouldn't complain at all if they started making tornado-proof schools.

In the wake of the Uvalde shooting, the Texas Education Agency plans to review external entry points of every school in Texas, as well as review each district's safety protocols, the Texas Tribune reported. ABC News has reached out to the agency for an update on its reviews.

Among the recommendations in an interim report by the Arkansas School Safety Commission drafted in response to the mass shooting in Uvalde were that all exterior school building doors and classroom doors should remain closed and locked during school hours, and that school districts should develop a "layered two-way communication access between staff to ensure information sharing during critical incidents," such as the use of intercoms, radios and cell phones.

Yeah, most of the article is about how to turn schools into, well, prisons. Custodians walking the halls to make sure the doors are locked, for example. There is a little bit about gun control in there, but most of that's not in Texas.

The Texas House of Representatives committee report on the Robb Elementary School shooting revealed the accused school shooter exhibited many warning signs prior to the massacre.

"If a student is showing that they're in crisis and you're taking steps to intervene, then you may want to use an extreme risk protection order to ensure that there's no access to guns by that young person," Wilcox said.

Wilcox pointed to testimony by a Baltimore sheriff who told state legislators in 2019 that in the first few months of Maryland's red flag law going into effect, his office seized firearms in five instances that involved schools.

Texas hates red flag laws. It didn't matter that there were warning signs in this case: the shooter was a dropout, and didn't return to what would have been his current school anyhow. Nobody would have seen the signs at the school where he murdered two teachers and a bunch of kids. And nobody is suggesting door-to-door mental health checks.

[Endus]

Like I said when your counter arguement is " well your right but not exactly right" I'm not gonna go into a tangent about one specific school system you have an issue with.

Public education is an utter cesspit of a dumping ground anywhere. If you have any talent for instructing pupils you are in the private sector. For the sheer basic level of service they provide.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...015367-eng.htm

Students in private schools generally have better educational outcomes, however on proper analysis, only two factors contributed to this; being born into better socio-economic characteristics, and having peers with university-educated parents. To quote directly; "School resources and practices played little to no role in accounting for the differences in academic outcomes."

Private schools don't provide better staff or curricula. They just benefit from the selection bias their tuition system creates; any family spending the money to send their kid to private school is generally far more invested in their child's education and understands the value of that education, attitudes that pass on to those kids. There's a difference in the students and their socioeconomic positions, not any meaningful difference in teachers or methods or the like. Those kids would do nearly as well in public schools.

[Fugus]

@Endus it really gets worse than that as well. Unlike public schools, private schools will also kick out the under performers to make their overall results LOOK better.

But on the overall, private tends to be no better than public, just a lot more expensive and unstable.

[gondrin]

Nor is it demanding or difficult work.

Anyone who says this about a job WITHOUT DOING SAID JOB should do that job for a good month. I never call someone's job easy, not demanding or easy UNLESS I have personally done it.

One of the hardest things to do is teach someone something that DOES NOT WANT TO LEARN IT. It is an extremely hard skill to master.

Once again, if you honestly feel all a teacher does is read from a book and then look at an answer key should go teach a class for a good month or so and try their method and see what happens.

[Shadowferal]

Hmf...went to a Catholic school first 8yrs. Considering the options in such a shitty area, that was a blessing.
Public high schools were no better. I had to walk out of the township to get to my public high school of choice. But that was far better than the few public options nearest me.

[Breccia]

One of the hardest things to do is teach someone something that DOES NOT WANT TO LEARN IT.

That sounds like a subsitute teacher's job description. And, as originally posted, Texas is so desperate they're bringing in anyone even willing to do the job. And offering $15/hour to do so. It's like it's a garbage job nobody wants to do, or something.

Plus, they're being shot and killed. Which doesn't help.

[Endus]

Anyone who says this about a job WITHOUT DOING SAID JOB should do that job for a good month. I never call someone's job easy, not demanding or easy UNLESS I have personally done it.

One of the hardest things to do is teach someone something that DOES NOT WANT TO LEARN IT. It is an extremely hard skill to master.

Once again, if you honestly feel all a teacher does is read from a book and then look at an answer key should go teach a class for a good month or so and try their method and see what happens.

I think people like Tentim particularly don't appreciate that 95% of what makes a teacher has absolutely fuck-all to do with knowledge of the material. I could teach a class in something I'm completely unfamiliar with, by keeping a chapter ahead of the students in reading the textbook and Googling questions they have that weren't covered between classes, while a PHD graduate in the field with no teaching experience or education will quite often end up with an unruly classroom that isn't absorbing any of the material being presented.

Teaching is a particular skill set. I have a degree in Education, specifically. Most of the class content had nothing to do with the curriculum material for your field of focus. Because that's not how the job works. Knowing everything about the War of 1812 isn't gonna make a class of hormonal 13-year-olds pay attention and be interested in the War of 1812, or get you to understand how to assess their learning and adjust accordingly (because a student failing means you failed that student, 99% of the time), how to plan the individual lessons to fit the time slots and build who section plans to ensure you can cover all the curriculum goals in the scholastic year you've got to work with.

[postman1782]

Good private education then if you want to split straws and I know you do.

Again, I haven't seen a good private education without indoctrinating them with fake religious bullshit.

[gondrin]

I think people like Tentim particularly don't appreciate that 95% of what makes a teacher has absolutely fuck-all to do with knowledge of the material. I could teach a class in something I'm completely unfamiliar with, by keeping a chapter ahead of the students in reading the textbook and Googling questions they have that weren't covered between classes, while a PHD graduate in the field with no teaching experience or education will quite often end up with an unruly classroom that isn't absorbing any of the material being presented.

Teaching is a particular skill set. I have a degree in Education, specifically. Most of the class content had nothing to do with the curriculum material for your field of focus. Because that's not how the job works. Knowing everything about the War of 1812 isn't gonna make a class of hormonal 13-year-olds pay attention and be interested in the War of 1812, or get you to understand how to assess their learning and adjust accordingly (because a student failing means you failed that student, 99% of the time), how to plan the individual lessons to fit the time slots and build who section plans to ensure you can cover all the curriculum goals in the scholastic year you've got to work with.

I've met a number of people who think the same way he does. They think the position is like Ben Stein's character from Ferris Buehler's Day Off. Don't get me wrong here, I've met a number of teachers that just phone it in on the job because they want to put the bare minimum in but then complain that they have students that don't want to listen or learn. However, I've met and had teachers that would go above and beyond to engage each child to where the child wants to learn.

Hardest part about teaching, from what I've seen, isn't the teaching, it is the engagement with people who don't want to be there in the first place, so they want to be there and learn.

For those kids, it is the closest thing they will get to a job until adulthood and much like a job, a crappy boss(teacher) can make all the difference between wanting to be there and just quitting.

- - - Updated - - -

Again, I haven't seen a good private education without indoctrinating them with fake religious bullshit.

I've seen good private education that isn't religious based but you are paying a lot for it and usually those are prep schools for college/university.

[Edge-]

https://www.chron.com/politics/artic...y-17374969.php

The Mothers Again Greg Abbott PAC is still putting out good ads. There's a video of the ad in the link. This pairs nicely with the actually serious bulletproof backpacks being sold to children, the requirements for children to have transparent backpacks (not how any of these recent shooters got their weapons on school grounds, but alright), and safety checks at the front gates with additional armed police presence.

Because as we all know from Uvalde, the more police present, the more police can stand around for an hour while children bleed to death.

[Breccia]

the requirements for children to have transparent backpack

The clear backpacks thing is...just fucking stupid.

1) Assault rifles, "long-barrel rapid-fire magazine-fed firearms", and weapons of war (there's some crossover in there) don't fit in backpacks.
2) There's no requirement for clear jackets or sweaters. Yes Texas gets cold, we have a thread about that too.
3) The shooters could just fire into the school from outside. Or more realistically, into the long line of people waiting to be frisked.
4) There are dozens of pistols small enough to fit in pencil boxes or binders. Small pistols sound like they'd be ideal for small children who want to murder a few of their classmates. So unless all the contents are clear, the clear exterior doesn't matter.

Staffing each school with armed police at each entrance actually sounds mildly effective. So would staffing each classroom with a qualified teacher. Guess which one Texas is doing?

[Endus]

The clear backpacks thing is...just fucking stupid.

1) Assault rifles, "long-barrel rapid-fire magazine-fed firearms", and weapons of war (there's some crossover in there) don't fit in backpacks.
2) There's no requirement for clear jackets or sweaters. Yes Texas gets cold, we have a thread about that too.
3) The shooters could just fire into the school from outside. Or more realistically, into the long line of people waiting to be frisked.
4) There are dozens of pistols small enough to fit in pencil boxes or binders. Small pistols sound like they'd be ideal for small children who want to murder a few of their classmates. So unless all the contents are clear, the clear exterior doesn't matter.

Staffing each school with armed police at each entrance actually sounds mildly effective. So would staffing each classroom with a qualified teacher. Guess which one Texas is doing?

5> Does nobody in the school have band? Because hiding guns in instrument cases is a legendary way to conceal weapons.
6> What if they have the wiliness to, say, wrap the handgun in a sweater before sticking it in their bag?

Clear backpacks are just authoritarian shitmongering used to abuse children and discourage them from feeling they have rights.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Clear backpacks are just authoritarian shitmongering used to abuse children and discourage them from feeling they have rights.

But at least Capitalism is able to march forward /s:

https://violenceresponse.com/product...ia-protection/

• NIJ Level IIIA Protection against handgun and shotgun threats.
• Anti-ballistic Kevlar panel is removable for cleaning and maintenance.
• Clear PVC lightweight vinyl is see-through to meet security restrictions.
• Adjustable padded straps.
• Main compartment is large enough to carry textbooks or a laptop.
• Front pocket is designed to hold smaller items like cellphones and smaller notebooks.
• Backpack and panel weigh only 4.5 lbs and is waterproof.

Buy now for only $185 $151.75!

[Poopymonster]

But at least Capitalism is able to march forward /s:

https://violenceresponse.com/product...ia-protection/





Buy now for only $185 $151.75!

For a modest fee, you can even get your schools logo on it!
You too can get your "GO UVALDE SITTING DUCKS!" backpack today!

[gondrin]

For a modest fee, you can even get your schools logo on it!
You too can get your "GO UVALDE SITTING DUCKS!" backpack today!

Ahh yes, just what I want, a target on me that will allow anyone who thinks of robbing me because I happen to have some nice things and someone else doesn't. Why don't we make everyone wear see through clothing(other then underwear type items) so we can see who has a gun or not? I mean, if we can subject kids to this type of nonsense in the name of security, why not everyone else?

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Because as we all know from Uvalde, the more police present, the more police can stand around for an hour while children bleed to death.

How many police does it take to open a door? None, they wait for the border patrol to do it for them.

[D Luniz]

Uvalde Fires Its School Police Chief in Response to Shooting
UVALDE, Texas — Facing intense pressure from parents, the school board in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday terminated its school police chief, Pete Arredondo, who directed the district’s police response to a mass shooting at an elementary school in which the gunman was allowed to remain in a pair of classrooms for more than 75 minutes.

and he's out
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/u...do-fired.html?
(not gonna waste a gift link on this, the title speaks for itself

[Edge-]

and he's out
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/u...do-fired.html?
(not gonna waste a gift link on this, the title speaks for itself

Only took what...three full months to the day, apparently? I guess it fits with the pace of Uvalde officials in general at this point. Things must generally happen pretty slow down there.

I do wonder if he's still getting invited to family barbeques and whatnot, because that seems incredibly awkward to be inviting arguably the guy most responsible for the police inaction that day.

[Breccia]

(not gonna waste a gift link on this, the title speaks for itself

Gotcha covered.

Uvalde Fires Its School Police Chief in Response to Shooting

Facing intense pressure from parents, the school board in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday terminated its school police chief, Pete Arredondo, who directed the district’s police response to a mass shooting at an elementary school in which the gunman was allowed to remain in a pair of classrooms for more than 75 minutes.

The unanimous vote, which Mr. Arredondo, through his lawyer, called “an unconstitutional public lynching,” represented the first direct accountability over what has been widely seen as a deeply flawed police response, one that left trapped and wounded students and teachers to wait for rescue as police officers delayed their entry into the two adjoining classrooms where the gunman was holed up.

Cheers broke out in the room as one of the board members, Laura Perez, made a motion: “I move that good cause exists to terminate the noncertified contract of Pete Arredondo, effective immediately,” she said.

Mr. Arredondo, who has led the small police force since 2020, was described by the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety as the incident commander responsible for the delayed response. Mr. Arredondo has said he did not consider himself to be in charge, and an investigative committee from the State Legislature concluded that a number of law enforcement agencies shared responsibility for what it called “systemic failures” in the response.

The school police force is one of several law enforcement agencies whose officers’ conduct during the shooting has been called into question. Inquiries are underway by the City of Uvalde into the actions of the acting police chief on that day, and by the Department of Public Safety into how its own officers responded at the school.

From the moment the meeting began in the high school auditorium, the tension was palpable. Brett Cross, an uncle of one of the victims, jumped onstage, catching the school board members off guard, and handed them a letter demanding that their deliberations, which they were about to hold behind closed doors, be open to the public.

After taking public comments, the board retreated to a closed session to conduct its deliberations and then returned after about 90 minutes to take the final vote in public.

Several parents and family members of the victims wore shirts with images of the victims, flowers and signs that read “Protect and Serve. Who. Yourself,” a reference to the police response.

Mr. Arredondo’s continued employment since the tragedy had been a source of controversy in the small South Texas community. Relatives of the victims and other Uvalde residents have been packing City Council and school board meetings demanding that those responsible for the delayed police response be held to account.

But in the statement released on Wednesday night by his lawyer, George E. Hyde, Mr. Arredondo insisted that he and his officers saved as many lives as they could with the tools that were available to them.

Though he was legally entitled to a public hearing to defend his reputation and clear his name, the statement said, he had decided not to attend the meeting because he had received death threats and feared for his safety.

Oh look, a public servant who's been receiving death threats. Hard to feel sympathy for Mr. Texas here.

I expect this to be challenged in court. I expect the challenge to be a circus and also fail.