TJUSD Board Meeting - November 14, 2019

[blackturtle.us]

The board meeting lasted about an hour and a moderate number of people were in attendance. Highlights as follows:

1) Interim Superintendent - Suzette Davis was introduced as the acting superintendent. Previously she served as superintendent for five years in Lucerne Valley. (Superintendent Keith Tomes was placed on administrative leave last week. No official explanation for this action has been provided.)

2) Board Member Comments - Build a Snowman Contest and Xmas Under the Lights - Two board members talked about these events. The Xmas Under the Lights event will be held on December 14th from 5-7 in the evening just north of Cedar Street near the Pioneer Point Market.

3) TTA - Teacher union president welcomed the new superintendent.

4) TCEA - Thanked board for approving new contract.

5) WASC Visit - HS principal told board about a document that needed to be approved in order to obtain accreditation. He also mentioned proposed board policies for continuation school.

6) ALICE Training - A teacher and the district counselor attended active shooter training in Cleveland, Ohio. Lots of events planned including Parents Night on January 23rd and a full day drill on January 30th. The most interesting remarks pertained to domestic terrorism. Supposedly there is a group being watched which has ties to the Death Valley area on the Nevada side of the park. I asked for follow up info and this group is called Atomwaffin and it is considered to be a white supremacist group.

7) Senior Class Field Trip - Three students made a pitch to the board for approval of their senior trip plans which include Disneyland and a place called GlowZone. All over-night trips require board approval and the board gave the seniors the go-ahead on this one.

8) Other items included approval of various job candidates, a transfer to funds, an LCAP federal addendum, and an employee resignation. One job approval was tabled and will be discussed at a special meeting to be held November 19th.

NEXT REGULAR MEETING - December 12th.

[defcon]

6) ALICE Training - A teacher and the district counselor attended active shooter training in Cleveland, Ohio. Lots of events planned including Parents Night on January 23rd and a full day drill on January 30th. The most interesting remarks pertained to domestic terrorism. Supposedly there is a group being watched which has ties to the Death Valley area on the Nevada side of the park. I asked for follow up info and this group is called Atomwaffin and it is considered to be a white supremacist group.

Active shooter drill? That's the stupidest thing you could possibly do, unless you are actually trying to go for a body count record! IDIOTS!!!

Other issues were brought to light with the shooting in Parkland Florida at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which was a high school that received active shooter training prior to an active shooting incident. The training was reportedly used to the advantage of the shooter, resulting in the deadliest school place shooting in the United States since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. The state of Florida is among 40 other states that require schools to test their plans with drills. It was alleged by some that the shooter, a former student, was familiar with the school's drills and emergency plans regarding active shootings, and he used it to his advantage to increase total casualties. This is an area of controversy in which training programs are having to determine what should be conveyed in the drills, or if there should be drills at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_shooter_training#Harmful_or_Helpful

[recluse]

How Active Shooter Drills Became a Big (and Possibly Traumatizing) Business
As kids prepare for the next mass shooting, experts say high-tech surveillance, tactical gear, and live drills are doing more harm than good
Companies like this ALICE organization are just out to exploit people's fears in order to make some cold hard cash. You can be gullible and fall for their scheme or you can wise up and become cynical and realize it's all about making some money.

The push to protect schools from mass shooters, and to make a buck off the hysteria around them, has also inspired a whole new array of tactical gear, from bulletproof whiteboards to safe rooms that are installed inside classrooms. Active shooter drills “can be very traumatizing for students,” says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University and an outspoken critic of the trend.

https://gen.medium.com/the-response-to-school-shootings-may-be-a-misfire-active-shooter-drills-teachers-students-6acb56418062

[ergot]

ALICE CONTROVERSY: Is the trauma of training for a school shooter worth it?
As usual when there's money to be made, someone will develop a product to fill the void. Then the next step is to convince even more people to buy the product. The problem is that not all products satisfy real needs. Often the need is imaginary or only a perceived need. That's where the smoke and mirrors come into play and this ALICE stuff sounds like a couple ounces of commonsense with a whole lot of hype and bullshit thrown in to convince morons that they can't live without what's being offered.

Critics of ALICE say it can cause undue anxiety among students, in preparation for an event that few will ever have to confront. As of 2016, almost 95 percent of students in U.S. public schools practice some sort of lockdown drill according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The likelihood a child will be killed at school is less than one in a million according to the government Bureau of Justice Statistics.

https://hechingerreport.org/is-the-trauma-of-training-for-a-school-shooter-worth-it/

[panamint_patty]

How Would You Face an Active Shooter? Drills for a Nation of Fear
There's a point where reasonable precaution becomes utter and complete insanity. Organizations such as ALICE profit off of utter and complete insanity and they attempt to manipulate the public into a panic over a real problem which would be better dealt with in a thoughtfully restrained manner.

These drills sometimes traumatize not only students—but also teachers. Some schools have been sharply criticized for unannounced active shooter drills that sometimes leave participants with PTSD, after thinking the drill had actually been the real thing.... but statistically, since 1999, there’s roughly a 1 in 614,000,000 chance of a school student being killed by a gun on campus. Yet, a constant state of fear and anxiety perpetuates.

https://observer.com/2019/06/alice-active-shooter-training-school-shootings/

[panamint_patty]

Love and politics end in Lucerne Valley school board recall
This Suzette Davis who was named superintendent here in Trona was caught up in some weird stuff while she was superintendent of Lucerne Valley. Lots of drama, but I especially wonder about this:

Lucerne Valley is a small unincorporated community in the rural High Desert, east of Apple Valley. It has 5,811 residents, according to the 2010 census, and about 700 students. (A charter school based in the district, which serves at-home independent study students, increases that number to 2,921 in California Department of Education statistics.)

Was this the same sleazy online charter operation that Trona was involved with?
https://www.sbsun.com/2016/02/07/love-and-politics-end-in-lucerne-valley-school-board-recall/

[cactuspete]

panamint_patty: It sounds like Lucerne Valley was a circus while Davis was in charge, but that seems to be mostly due to the actions of one deranged school board member. From the article you posted:

“The recall is nothing personal. Personal relationships — your problems at home, your screwed-up marriage — that has nothing to do with the recall,” Gasper said. “It was the fact of her outbursts and things, the school board had to not allow students to be present at meetings, so that’s a problem for me. Her lashing out and accusations” of violations of California’s open meetings law, “the accusations against the district for all the financial stuff, and the slanderous acts against the superintendent.”

[twister]

What happened to the previous superintendent all of a sudden out of the blue in the middle of the year? I see that no official explanation was given, but someone must know what happened?

[pdm]

What I want to know about is this Atomwaffin stuff. I get what kind of organization it is, but I seriously doubt that there is such a group anywhere around Death Valley. Maybe one or two individuals, but probably no such group. Maybe in Las Vegas, but that's a big city and there's always going to be some nuts in any city. Sounds to me like the ALICE people just made this crap up on the spot to keep the attention of the two people from Trona who were in Cleveland for the training.

[BoraxBill]

pdm: You're probably right. I've been all around Death Valley and the surrounding areas and I've talked to a lot of people while out and about and I haven't heard anything about this white supremacist group. That doesn't mean that there's not any of that kind of thing in or near Death Valley, but I'm thinking that an assertion like that just might be an attempt to heighten the anxiety of the people who went to the ALICE training. You might call it a sales tactic....