Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Principles of Principals ?

What do the following three things have in common?
1. A Broward County school district
2. San Diego city libraries
3. A private school in the northern suburbs of San Diego

Actually these three things have little in common, except for a common unifying liberal policy or principle. Note that I did not say “principal”, although if you called the head of the library system, ‘a principal’ and a school superintendent, ‘a principal’, then one could probably say that the common thing is that you have three principals with leftist principles.
Let’s discuss separately:

1. In 2013, apparently Broward County schools rewrote their disciplinary policies to make it nearly impossible to suspend, expel, or arrest students for behavioral problems including criminal activity. This strategy has been adopted by more than 50 school districts nationwide, and allows troubled students to commit crimes without legal consequence with the stated purpose to slow the “school to prison pipeline.” Of interest the Broward school Superintendent, Robert Runcie, had close ties to Barack Obama and his Education Department. His new policy promoted discipline through participation in “healing circles,” obstacle courses, and other “self esteem building exercises.”
One of the lead advocates for this programs was Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel. In November 2013, he reportedly signed an agreement that spelled out 13 crimes that could no longer be reported to the police. Unfortunately, since then ex-students without an arrest record, could buy weapons, and also without an arrest record, the police could not corroborate tips with past arrests.
Not surprising Broward County, where Nikolas Cruz went to school, went from leading the state of Florida in student arrests to having one of the lowest school-incarceration rates in the state. If this is the parameter by which Runcie’s policy is measured, it could be considered a success . . . however, if the measured parameter is ‘lives lost’ . . . 17, then it is not!

2. San Diego city libraries will now automatically renew a book on its due date, and the book will be automatically renewed up to five times. This despite the fact that there is a three day email notification when a book is due, and the book can easily be renewed by phone or by email. What this now means is that it is almost impossible for the lender to pay a late fee. From my perspective the message to the users of the library is: “If your book is late, don’t worry. There is no need for you to take responsibility. You won’t be punished with a fine as there is no consequence for your inaction!” Officials contend that fines for returning items late create an adversarial relationship between libraries and the people that use them, and Misty Jones, San Diego’s head librarian commented that “‘Seinfeld’ did a whole show about library cops.” (I am assuming that regular readers already understand my theory about the correlation between first names and political leanings!) Uri Gneezy, a behavioral economist at U.C. San Diego feels that charging fines introduces a potentially damaging economic element into the relationship between libraries and the people that use them. (Let me try to understand this kind of position: “The library and the library user have entered into a contract of sorts. The user may use the library’s book for free for a certain period of time, but only for that specified period of time. If the user keeps the book beyond that period of time, there will be a fine . . . Whoops! Never mind. For you, the library user, forget the concept of a contract. Forget the concept of personal responsibility. Forget the fine.”) If Uri and Misty feel that a fine of 30 cents a day is too steep for the poorest among us, then lower the daily fine rate, but, please, do not destroy the concept of personal responsibility for those who most need to learn that concept. I hope that the parameter, by which this new plan’s success is measured, is not the number of library fines that were levied or the number of books that were returned late!

3. At the school where my son teaches, the principal has just introduced the concept of “Restorative Discipline.” From what I can understand this new policy involves the teacher (not the principal!) sitting down with the misbehaving student and explaining to him/her that their actions are not acceptable in the classroom setting, and to please not do it again. The principal apparently feels that a policy of talking nicely and rationally to a high school student can supposedly alter a student’s mis-behavior without resorting to the usual principle of “you must learn that you are responsible for your actions, and so you must pay the penalty – the usual penalty is an hour or so of detention either after school or on Saturday.” Since this new enlightened policy has just gone into effect, time will tell if disconnecting an action from its unpleasant consequences will alter student’s behavior. I hope that the parameter by which this new principle is judged is not the number of hours that students are spending in detention!
Just as the Kumbaya principle of no consequences for bad behavior did not work in Broward County, I will predict that it will not work in libraries or in private schools. Hopefully the consequences of these new principles by leftist principals will be recognized as typical leftist “pie-in-the-sky” consequences before bad things happen.

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