Charter schools bad, unions and politicians would rather warehouse and socially promote the students
Via Philly Com
UNRULY students roaming the halls, fighting, smoking weed. Ordering takeout.
Frightened teachers covering their windows and locking their sometimes busted-up doors – while what? – whispering Hail Marys that the roaming band of delinquents won’t disrupt their classes.
And then just days before a lunchtime brawl at Bartram High School that left six students in police custody, a staffer assigned to keep the peace gets knocked unconscious by a student and suffers a fractured skull.
The March 21 incident grabbed headlines, but it was just the latest incident at a school long plagued by violence.
In 1999, an assistant principal trying to break up a fight was shot by a student in the school. From 2002 to 2008, the school was on the state’s list of persistently dangerous schools, district spokesman Fernando Gallard said.
In 2010, when it was not on the list, a mother stood before a Family Court judge and told him that the reason her son wasn’t going to school was because he was getting beaten up and nothing was being done to protect him.
So far this school year, the district has reported dozens of serious incidents at Bartram, including assaults, robberies and one incident of “forced oral sex.”
We might ask ourselves: How could we let this happen?
But while this question relates to Bartram, the answer is the same it is for all of this city’s problems: We get used to all kinds of things in Philly, including corrupt politicians, negligent city agencies and a bunch of mostly poor and black and Latino students trying – often in vain – to get an education.
Because that’s just how things are, right? It’s “normal.” “Business as usual.” Yawn.
And the tragedy is that this, more than anything, is what we’re teaching our kids. Sophomore Ramira Andrews said as much in the Inquirer story about staff and student concerns over safety. She used to be scared. “But then I got used to it.”