A week
prior to the incident the school put in place new after school pick-up
procedures. Instead of parents being able to park in the lot and come to the
building for their children they now have to sit in their cars along the side
of the highway outside of the school and wait in line for their children to
come to them. The change came from a suggestion by the school’s Parent Teacher
Organization and school officials state that parents were notified of the
changes multiple times.
Howe
went to school one day to pick up his children (which is his right as their
parent) and when he got out of his car the School Resource Officer, Avery
Aytes, told him to get back in his vehicle. A few days later, Howe arrived at
the school on foot to pick up his children. When he went into the building and
Aytes told him to go back to his vehicle and wait, Howe informed him that his children
were walking home with him, to which the officer apparently replied, “No
they’re not.” An argument ensued and Howe ended up being handcuffed right there
at the school and charged with disorderly conduct.
Donald
Andrews, the Superintendent of the Cumberland County School District, stands by
the policy change and the actions of Officer Aytes, as does County Sheriff
Butch Burgess. As for Howe, he is now following the new policy, stating that
parents have no choice to follow it unless they want to get arrested. In a
statement to reporters, Howe had this to say about the incident: “It’s a
violation of our parental rights. It’s a violation of our rights as people. I
don’t have any regrets… We have to stand up against bad policy and stand up for
our rights. If we don’t, we won’t have any.”
Alright,
now listen. I won’t argue that if a parent is becoming unruly and creating a
commotion at the school they should be removed from the premises. If that means
in handcuffs, then so be it. That’s a simple matter of the children’s safety
and I have no problem with that. The issue is the school telling parents how
they’re allowed to pick up their children. Maybe I’m running late or my
children have sports or something to get to and we don’t have time to wait in
line. What then? Tough shit because the policy is the policy? What if I didn’t
vote on or agree to that policy? Other parents did, so I have to do with my
children what they say? No, that’s not going to work for me.
Howe is 100% accurate in saying
that this violates our parental rights. Unless my children are in immediate
danger nobody is going to tell me what to do with them. What is the world
coming to when shit like this happens when a parent tries to pick up his
children from school? It’s a snowballing issue set in motion by events nowhere
near this parent or that school. It all comes down to children’s safety in
school and the school feeling the need to be crazy protective of the children
in their care. I get that, but it’s our fault as a society that this is happening.
It’s the fault of all of the people abducting children and shooting up schools.
I don’t fault Howe, Aytes, the
school or the Parent Teacher Organization for this incident. I fault us as a
society for making it happen. You can argue all you want that we didn’t force
Howe to cause a disruption, but that’s seeing the incident through tunnel
vision. The bigger picture is that the school and the Parent Teacher
Organization felt the need to instill this policy in the first place. If you can't see the sad turn things are taking, then clearly you're blind and I'm surprised you can even read this.
Yours truly,
-The Absurdist
***Information used in this post was found in an article titled Tennessee man gets arrested while trying to pick up kids at school at www.nydailynews.com by Joel Landau on November 20, 2013.***
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you have to say about that? HUH?! WHAT?!