Mar 12 2008
Controversial Bullying Policy Passes CMS School Board 6-3
Dozens of students urged the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board to pass a new policy Tuesday to protect them from bullies.Christian conservatives urged the board not to, voicing concerns that the policy will promote homosexuality.But after more than two hours of impassioned arguments from more than 40 speakers, the board approved the policy on a 6-3 vote. Kaye McGarry, Ken Gjertsen and Larry Gavreau opposed it.Students in the audience greeted passage of the policy with cheers and a standing ovation.
“We’ve needed this policy for a long time,” board member Tom Tate said. “Bullying is not going to be tolerated at all at any time in CMS.”
I have to throw a jab in here at the author of the Observer article who felt the need to frame the opposition as being “Christian conservatives.” I didn’t realize that every single person who was opposed to the way this new policy was written was doing so on the basis of Christian beliefs. Actually, I don’t recall any of the people opposing this policy claiming to be doing so in the name of Christian conservatism. That one sentence tells us a lot about Mr. Frazier.
Now getting to the point, I do feel that some of those opposing the new anti-bullying regulations were a bit over dramatic. I don’t see any pushed homosexual agenda here simply because it names homosexuality as one of the forbidden categories of bullying. In addition to sexual orientation, many other factors were written into the language as well, including height, weight, race, religion, etc., but for some reason the opposition was focusing explicitly on the verbiage of homosexuality.
Having said that, I do agree with some of the opposition who pointed out that CMS already has regulations forbidding bullying of any type within the schools. So, why does an additional policy need to be written and passed naming specific classes of victims? That certainly does give the appearance of an agenda, whether there is or not. Furthermore, CMS hasn’t bothered to enforce the current anti-bullying policies on the books so why is anyone to believe they will enforce this new set of rules? Some of the speakers at last night’s meeting in support of the new policy spoke as if passage of the new language was equivalent to a magic button being pushed and that suddenly today every child enrolled at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools would attend class bully free.
I think over reaction was present on both sides of this policy and turned it into a three ring media circus that it never needed to be.
“I don’t see any pushed homosexual agenda here simply because it names homosexuality as one of the forbidden categories of bullying.”
According to Tara Servatius, it was originally pushed as ‘diversity training’ and is funded by a homo activist group. From what I gather, the preferred method of bullying prevention is to teach the students that there’s nothing wrong with the named groups.
The bullying problem is due to the allowance of trash in the school system, because they have a “Right to education,” which translates in the real world to, they’re required to attend even when they’re a disturbance to the learning process.
Lower the mandatory attendance age and kick out the thugs - permanently! - and the bullying will be greatly reduced. Of course, since police seem to want to treat the school system as a day care for the young thugs, this is unlikely to happen.
About 12 years ago my son was attending middle school and was being harassed and bullied on his way to school each day by another student. I went to the assistant principle and he called a meeting with me, my kid, the other kid and his parent. I got the impression the middle school assistant principle thought the whole meeting was a joke. The next day the kid did the same thing again to my kid. I wanted to arm my kid to go to school. My wife said I was crazy. The bullshit went on and on for months with my kid getting so upset every day.
What the idiot administrators did not understand is how young teenagers minds work. They do not perceive threats like an adult. When a bully makes outrageous statements to their victims it scares them! What would the administrators or the bully’s parent think if one day while his kid was doing some sport bullying the victim pulled out a pistol and dropped him dead right there in the floor? Dead forever! Is the sport of bullying worth death forever?