Hillcrest High was put on lock down today, because a local business was robbed at gun point. Not long ago my own children's school was put on lock down from a situation that I found out about through the local media.  No letter was ever sent home from the school, no phone call made to our home, no nothing. As a parent, I had to find out from a news report that I found on a local news media website.  It caused me to wonder why were they not communicating with me, the parent.  Sure maybe my children were not in danger, but it would have had some type of communication, even if it was as simple as a "You may have heard that there was a lock down at our school today, let me tell you what that means for your student..." and then explained what procedures they may go through.  I would much rather be informed about things like this be able to speak intelligently with my children about something like that then have it an unknown. On the flip side, what a great tool (if it hasn't already been developed) for someone to develop.  Take something like Google Maps and integrate it a subscription type emailing system, where you allow businesses and individuals to sign up for alerts of anything happening in their area.  You could send out coupons, event and informational alerts, etc. Take the Hillcrest incident I mentioned above.  So the store above is robbed, they send out the information to those people, the school gets it and is put on lock down (or is put on lock down in their typical fashion), they then alert their parents in through the same email type system. It all happens in a matter of minutes and for relatively little cost compared to composing  a paper letter replicating it and sending it home with students. Now who wants to help me develop and market it?

Growing up, I have memories of going to school super early in the morning.  This is when I was in Elementary School and it seemed like we were out pretty early in the afternoon.  It wasn't until I was older that I realized (or was told rather) that it was because the school I was attending was on split sessions.  Basically we had a second set of students that would attend in the afternoon. The area that we lived in was new and I'm sure that it was the District's was of attempting to ease overcrowding.  Of course, that was nearly 30 years ago.  Nowadays the answer is to go to year round school.  I must say, from purely a family perspective, I'm not much of a fan. I understand the arguments in this story about retaining knowledge, and doing better and tests, but some days I feel like I need to hire a Hollywood Talent Manager just to help my wife and I keep the kids school schedule straight. This next year it is going to be even worse and over the next few years it will only compound for our family.  If we were on a traditional schedule it would make things significantly better that's for sure.

With all of the garbage that happens between Teacher and student these days, I had always kept in the back of my mind that something like this may just happen, but I had really hoped that it never would. I realize that nobody is immune from this type of stuff, though I wish that certain professions were moreso, especially teachers.   I'm hoping to never see another news report like this one in the new again, but sadly I doubt that will happen. I spent four years attending LDS Seminary during High School and I can honestly say that when I attended it was great.  For clarification, I did graduate with my four year diploma, but I had some make up work to do.  See my Sophomore year I had Seminary 7th period and didn't always make it past the basketball courts in the gym. I attended religiously (no pun intended) during my Junior year, though it had nothing to do with the course content.  It had more to do with the teacher (ok, ok, I'm being a bit hypocritical here).  You see I had a female Seminary teacher and in my eyes (and for many in my class) she was gorgeous, so we had every reason to be in class, except the reason that I'm sure our parents, church and Seminary leaders wanted us there for. My Senior year I finally figured it out and attended for what I think were the right reasons and I got a lot out of the class.  Sadly, there is one girl in Utah County right now, that has likely now received a lifetime of problems and issues because of what has allegedlyhappened with this man. As for the article, there is one line that I mostly agree with.  It reads "You hope when you send your children to school, that they are going to be safe and those people who are teaching them are going to keep them safe,". I don't simply hope that my children are safe when I send them off to school, or to a friends house, or to church, I expect it.

This is really starting to get out of hand.  It doesn't seem to matter whether isn't a small town or large city, public school or private school, male or female teacher anymore, you hear about them all the time. I would argue that there is probably at least one ongoing Teacher has some kind of inappropriate relation with a student story going on somewhere in Utah nearly all the time.  There was one that just wrapped up within the last week or so and now this one. I wish that I knew what the solution was, but I worry for own children.  The High School that they will attend has had two such incidents in recent years, which compared to a couple of High Schools in the area is nothing, but in my mind it is two too many. What saddens me is according to this story, this guy had previously had two positions of trust within his community and his church.  You would think and hope that he would have known better.  Maybe all of this could turn out to be false accusations, but you would hope that if it got to this point that people were doing their job enough to make sure that wasn't the case.

I like almost everything in this article.  There is just one thing that I made me cringe a little.  Well besides the fact that a gun was found on school grounds, of course.  It appears that everything did everything right.  The thing that I wish was different is this sentence, "The school resource officer was at the school at the time". While the timing was for this instance was great, I wonder how often is the School Resource Officer really able to be at the school.  How many schools does the office actually have to cover and is there are way to be able to fix that. Ideally I would love to see an Officer and along with that a School Nurse  in each school.  I realize that this is very expensive, but I see value with them being there. I see value in the Nurse being able to teach a class or two a day in such things as Health, or guest lecture in such classes.  The same with an Officer in some of the classes.  I would personally love it if my daughters were taught very early on in their schools (by an Officer) maybe a few times each school year, self defense classes and such. Those are simply bonuses of having them in the schools and things that I think that they could do if they have the time.  I'm sure that there are tons of things that they could and should do there. I know that my children would feel very (possibly even more safe) if they were to see a uniformed Police Officer at their school everyday.  It's just too bad that many of the school's around the country can't afford these types of things.

A little more clarification on the story from the post from yesterday, but I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it. Ok, so maybe the boys aren't being charged as harshly as I had originally thought, and maybe they did beat the filter in a way that it wouldn't normally have been beat, but this whole thing still just seems strange to me. Maybe I'm just being a bit too pessimistic, but does something still just not add up still?

My wife and I discussed this story a bit this evening. It's a tricky one, because here you have 11 year olds who are using the internet to beat the schools filters and show inappropriate images to their classmates.  If it's anything like my own childrens school there was probably an agreement that they and their parents had to sign at the beginning of the school year that outlined some guidelines for the student in order for them to use internet on school computers along with the possble ramifications if they mis-use it. Where I shake my head is what they are considering charging the students with.  I'm not sure if that's the solution, but I'm also not entirely familiar with the guidelines that the officers are having to work within. It just seems to me that possibly charging 11 year olds with sec0nd-degree felonies or even Class A Misdemeanors may do more damage to these kids (yes, that is what they are) than good. I wish that I could offer up a good solution, but I can't.  Sadly, I simply see it as a sad state of our world today.

Specifically with this story.  Here is where my confusion comes on.  The Middle School students are already released early from school one day a week.  I thought that this was so that the teachers had some preparation time, but I'm assuming that because of this change that this is not the case and that it's simply and early off of work day (if there are any teachers that read this and would like to speak up and set me straight, please do). So now I'm starting to see stories like this pop up and apparently the Middle Schools are now going to start 2 hours later on Fridays.  Does this mean that the students will be getting out early on Wednesday and starting late on Fridays OR just starting late on Fridays? Personally I don't like the starting late on Fridays because it's more disruptive than getting out early for the families, especially those families that have children in several different schools.  What of the poor families that have students in the High School. Middle School, Elementary School and possibly a Kindergartner that is in the Afternoon Kindergarten? Of course, what happens if the students miss the bus for some reason?  Gets sick during the two hours that they are home (potentially alone)?  There's a storm delay? In the end, I agree with the quote from the story, it would have been nice to have had some type of input or at least some type of notice.

Remember this? Well, last week we received a phone call from the school to inform us that our other son had been awarded the same award as his brother had been. So I took part of the day off of work and we snuck over to the school for the awards ceremony.  He says that he was surprised but I really wonder if that's true. We're pretty proud of him though.

After dinner tonight my son came up to my room with some news. His band teacher (who was also my band teacher back in the day) has asked him to play percussion.  The funny thing is that this band teacher asked me to do the same thing over 20 years ago. He will still play the Trumpet but will also be playing some percussion now. So last night after he told me this, we broke out my old practice pad and bag of sticks/mallets.  I gave him a few pointers and he practiced for pretty much the rest of the night.