Close the campuses. Students come to school at 8:15. They go home at 3:15 p.m. (or whatever). They don't leave the school grounds. NOT AT ALL. It worked when I went to school. It works elsewhere today.
School officials make all kinds of excuses. I'm not impressed. And I'm not convinced:
Some audience members asked why the school district doesn't move to a closed lunch system. But Wachala said that, with 1,500 students and two lunch periods, the 350-seat cafeteria simply couldn't handle the traffic if all students were forced to stay on campus.I wish I could believe that. I can't. That's not an explanation, it's an excuse. If the school can house and (purportedly) educate all the students, it can find room for all of them to eat. That is if it wanted to find room for all of them to eat.
I don't believe it does. I believe the administrators and teacher just want an hour or two every day when the students are gone and are someone else's problem. They don't really care if they're off campus causing problems, as long as they're not causing me any problems. Meetings like the one Sunday night are nothing more than lip service. Attempts to placate critics.
I'm not the only one who does not believe the administrators.
"Over 20 years, you would think funds could be found for a bigger cafeteria," said Brad Cronk, who lives on Holiday Drive.Therefore, the school would prefer that some of those behaviors happen outside of their area of responsibility.
Cronk also said student behavior is worsening.
"The children are becoming more defiant, more headstrong," he said. "They do things we would never dream of doing."
So the final answer is one of two things: either the school is incapable of handling its students, or it's unwilling to try.
Or both
And so it goes
2 comments:
I used to teach over at Danville High School and we had a closed campus. I could very well be wrong, but at least at the time, I thought DHS was one of the bigger schools in the area (early 1990s).
I appreciated the closed campus from a safety standpoint. It seems to me the kids were less likely to run into any trouble if they had to stay in a supervised environment. Besides, the kids hated it so you know it must have been good for them ;)
Can't agree more. And can't understand why Champaign administrators can't see this. There have been problems at both Centennial and Central for decades. And often the problem is the kids meeting up with others who are NOT students but like to hang around and cause problems.
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