Through seventy five percent of a presidential term, a school district in Washington State is struggling to adapt to the ardent repercussions of failed policy in an apparent leap towards the ambiguous ideals of utopia.
According to the Seattle Times, the Highline School district (just South of Seattle) is facing a series of dubious consequences in direct correlation to the adoption of a “relaxed” discipline and in-school suspension policy first implemented in 2013. The program effectively eliminated student suspensions and kept offenders on campus, except for extreme cases when school safety was compromised or the staff determined that the individual was “unsafe”. No longer are the serial troublemakers removed from the school and environment, and the roller-coaster ride truly begins. Over the period of three years the results are less than encouraging and border on the harrowing as the degradation of district infrastructure is plagued by the unchecked resignation rate of veteran teachers and a dumpster fire increase of on campus incidents. However, the writer from the Seattle Times, paints the architects of the putrid experiment with an artistic brush of munificent praise.
“Superintendent Susan Enfield, an ambitious and visionary schools chief, vowed to eliminate such punitive sanctions, except in cases that jeopardized campus safety.”
Enfield’s actions are typical of an over-educated bureaucrat who fails to grasp the socioeconomic nuances and subsequent consequences pertaining to an approach of discipline and exist as a dichotomy to the mechanisms of reality. While the environment within classrooms remains turbulent, due to the lack of staff training in handling escalating situations, the true disconcerting figures are manifested in the crime data for King County. Thus far for the calendar year of 2016, 38% of homicide charges in the county involve current or former Highline students.
Even the state Teachers Union, a powerful and vast billion-dollar entity focused on its own existence and fielding an checkered past of questionable policy and legislation, is displaying wavering support and disdain for the tumultuous environment in Highline classrooms. As Enfield faces little to no accountability for the failed construct of a system destined for the vortex of chaos, students and parents play victim to the battered dreams of the enabled generation.
Read the full Seattle Times article here.