Posted on by grumpyoldteacher · 3 Comments

Cold As Ice

Long before ‘Ice, Ice, Baby,’ this was the quintessential song:

Please, please, Facebook algorithm, I’m sharing a YouTube video, not impersonating.

What a field day we could have with the lyrics! But this piece is about the legal advice recently given to principals in my local school district, Duval County Public Schools (FL), and while this post may embarrass them, which the Board is turning into a fireable offense, I am retired and beyond their reach.

What should school officials do if ICE agents (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) show up at the door demanding access to students?

The legal department issued a memo that outlined the approach school employees should take: ICE agents are law enforcement officers; therefore they should be accommodated no different than what the school system would do for JSO (Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office) officers.

  • Allow them to come onto school property. They do not need a warrant.
  • If they ask to speak to a specific student, accommodate them but remember to notify the student’s parents immediately, stay with the student until the parents arrive, and remain present during the interview.
  • If they ask to speak to a group of students, call the legal department.
  • If they ask for access to student records, protect student rights. Call the legal department.
  • Do not give an exclusive listing of ELL/ESOL students. Any requests must include all students whose parents have not opted out of public directory listings.

Soooooooooooooooooooo, pretty much, go into a CYA approach and notify the legal department. There are no assurances about what actions they will or will not take.

To date, we are reassured, there has been no ICE activity in our county’s schools. But if you think that Stephen Miller and his minions haven’t figured out the schools are a weak point when it comes to resisting unlawful enforcement of immigration laws, we still have some worthless Florida swamp land for sale.

As with the tariffs, even the threat of ICE action has a detrimental effect. Canadians have pulled American imports off their store shelves as they refuse to purchase them. If you want a historical parallel, think back to 1983 when the Soviets shot down a South Korean plane that strayed over Sakhalin Island and, in response, American bars poured their stocks of Stolischnaya vodka down the sink.

Teachers across the land are reporting that some students have stopped coming to school out of fear of ICE arrest or detention or that while at school, their parents will be taken and they will come home to an empty house. (I’d love to show social media screenshots or cite sources, but well, you know that in cases like these anonymity is best. Do your own research if you don’t trust me.)

Is it time to cue the biennial NAEP hysteria about falling test scores and American students falling behind? It’s hard for children to learn when they don’t feel safe. Since January 20, there have been mistakes including challenging the citizenship of Puerto Ricans on the mainland because they were overheard speaking Spanish. But we are told that “there are no free passes anymore.”

It’s not a new problem. We are hearing about ICE deporting U.S. citizens, but this has been happening for a while. “Oops, my bad,” is not sufficient for getting this wrong. What child carries a copy of their immigration papers daily into school just in case? Are we becoming Soviet Russia, where every one of us has to carry an internal passport to leave our houses?

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me; hinder them not for to such belongs the Kingdom of God.”

What would he say today? Perhaps this: “You’re as cold as ice, you’re willing to sacrifice our love. You never take advice, someday you’ll pay the price, I know. I’ve seen it before …”

Someday we’ll pay. It begins with the children. What’s missing in that DCPS memo is what the principal should do when ICE says this child is illegally in the United States and we’re taking them with us. But hey, call legal.

Addendum: Since the original publication of this post, more has been learned:

Update : Duval County School Board attorney explains his rationale.

Update : Six Central Florida school districts have issued their own policies.

Posted on by grumpyoldteacher

The Five Musketeers

One for all and all for one … and in a modern update, One in Five, a Texas-based foundation that grew out of the Uvalde tragedy to help patrol schools and head off problems that show up on the sidewalk outside.

Musketeers without muskets, they want to patrol the perimeter of schools to stop violence.

They have a full mission, which can be found here. It’s well worth the two minutes of your time to click on the link and acquaint yourself with their desire to do it all when it comes to preventing school violence and dealing with the aftermath, not to mention their agenda and the laws they want passed.

This piece deals with this part of their self-assigned mission: “The Foundation works as well to actively provide additional security and safety training resources to enhance a schools individual security; for example situational awareness & uniquely, student organized, active shooter training & prevention.”

Why? Because they are coming to Duval County Public Schools, uninvited and unbidden, to address gang violence in high schools, in particular, Ed White and Mandarin High Schools. This is a response to recent fights taking place among groups of students.

According to the One in Five Foundation, “This in an effort to address the seemingly rising gang activity and to increase student safety throughout campus district neighborhood & provide additional community support for students, faculty, parents & school. Foundation officials say that it believes gang conflicts amongst several students of at least 4 separate district schools, including Ed White HS, are increasing off Campuses and spilling into campus conflicts and must be addressed immediately.“

Unfortunately, although this group may have a sincere desire to help, they are taking this action unilaterally. Neither the school district nor the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office have had any contact with them. Efforts by school officials to contact the group and find out what they have planned have been unsuccessful.

No one knows what a group of unknown individuals, dressed in some type of uniform, think they can do standing outside a school on a public sidewalk. But they believe they can do some kind of good never mind the fact that most students arrive on campus via bus or car and they will be on the campus, not crossing the sidewalk or that, without some type of official recognition or established relationship with students, the adolescent mentality will wonder, “Who were those creepy, weird-a$$, mofos on the sidewalk?”

As for the adults, we will wonder why they are bothering. If they have not been invited by district officials and are unknown to local law enforcement, doesn’t that make them vigilantes?

Posted on by grumpyoldteacher

A Measly Case of Measles

He’s well paid for what he does. Besides his gig at the FL Department of Health, he was given a tenured position at the U of F, of which his fellow profs accuse him of not showing up.

Or so would Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo would have you believe. His vaccine-hesitant approach to public health discourages parents and others from protecting their children with sound preventative measures. He was caught altering the data in medical research studies to support his mistaken idea that Covid vaccines cause heart problems in healthy, young adults. Not related to the topic of this post, but he has also been instrumental in Florida’s decision to deny gender affirming care to minor children, one that is also causing trans adults to have problems maintaining the medical care that they require.

For many of us, his approach to medicine and public health recalls the middle school insult I once observed a student saying to his teacher after suffering through a whole-class harangue about diligence in completing the day’s work, “Quack, quack, quack, you want bread with that?”

National news has reported on an outbreak of measles in a Broward County elementary school. NBC, WaPo, CNN, and the Associated Press among others are reporting on it. There are six confirmed cases for students in the school who are in the subgroup of unvaccinated children that numbers 200. That number may not be accurate as every story quotes a different number, but all of them indicate a vaccination rate for the school that is under 90%. 95% is needed to protect the entire population, vaxxed and unvaxxed, under the concept of herd immunity.

Measles is the most contagious viral disease that we know. If exposed, it is almost a certainty that anyone without protection from a vaccine (or for those of us old enough to predate the MMR vaccine, lingering immunization from contracting measles in childhood) will get the illness and suffer.

Time-honored medical advice for parents whose children are not vaccinated is to keep them home until the community recovers–generally 21 days from the first known infection/exposure.

Also, experts note, it’s never too late to get the vaccine. That will also provide protection. Even if it’s only the first of the two MMR doses needed, it’s better than nothing.

But Ladapo never mentions that in his letter. You can read a copy here if you scroll down.

Instead, he tells parents that it’s their decision. Monitor any symptoms that might appear, don’t rush to the nearest medical facility if they do–call ahead first, but it’s your call.

There is no advice that parents should vaccinate their children if they haven’t yet done so.

Oh, Florida! Or Flori-duh if you’re inclined. The World Health Organization reports that 56,000,000 deaths were averted between 2000 and 2021 due to measles vaccinations. But in 2021, there were 128,000 deaths mostly among unvaccinated or undervaccinated children less than 5 years old.

It’s easy to dismiss the stats like Ladapo. Vaccination has been so successful in suppressing measle, mumps, rubella, and other diseases once known as the childhood diseases that it’s easy to believe that they are no longer needed. But the increasing outbreaks since 2010 give the lie to that thought.

Statistics don’t matter when it’s your kid. Back in my pre-vaccine days, hundreds of kids died from measles every year. That might not mean much given the millions of young children due to the baby-booming, but when it’s your kid, you don’t want to hear how rare it is. IT’S YOUR KID.

The latest news out of Broward is that there’s a new case in the community, one that is not related to the school. Read the article: 1 out of 5 cases results in hospitalization with severe complications.

Somehow, “Quack, quack, quack, you want bread with that?” seems an inadequate way to conclude this post. Not when it’s this serious, not when we may be about to see something we haven’t seen in 60 years.

Ignore the foolishness of Florida and its Surgeon General. Vaccinate your children. Now, if not sooner.