2. Category of problem: Education
3. Level of problem: State / National
4. The article concerns: Gang violence linked to murder at Spring High School in the Houston area.
5. Why is this important to families / individuals OR how does it affect individuals / families?
a. Gang violence appears to be the motive of the murder of a black high school student by a Hispanic student at Spring High School, just north of Houston. The incident has moved parents of students to call for better security as well as better communication, after a 3 hour lag for official word, to inform parents of future problems at the school.
6. What are your views on the issue / policy?
a. I graduated from Klein High School in 2009, and Spring was a rival school in our district. Even back then, I could see the dynamics in population changes slowly taking place in these areas north of Houston. Klein was mostly white with an increasing number of Asians moving into the district while Spring was pretty evenly split with whites and blacks, although two other schools in the Spring district (Westfield & DeKaney) were predominately black. Four years later, the changing aspects of races has obviously changed with more Hispanics moving into both areas. Gang activity when I was in school was known, but rarely seen. And, when sport activities caused me to cross paths with the Spring schools, there did not appear to be a gang problem or, maybe, it just was not as visible as it apparently is now in Spring. Clearly, a gang problem affects the whole school population where students are concerned for their safety in a supposed safe environment. Interviews and reports coming from Houston state that many parents are pulling their children from the school for private or home schooling. Seemingly, from what I have heard, this problem or home schooling. Seemingly, from what I have heard, this problem has been festering for a while, and now a tragedy of someone being killed is motivating officials to improve security and the whole environment of going to school. Students should expect a safe place when they leave the safety of their home to school. But, just like many other things in life, it takes an incident of this magnitude to force people into action when the better action would have been to address the problem long before now. Unless school officials are totally blind, they know who the 'bad apples' are, and if they are going to school to socialize or cause problems to support their gangs and not learning, then they need to be eliminated from that environment. That may be a harsh statement, but coddling and pampering trouble-makers for the sake of quotas or government funding should not be the way forward for students who do want to get an education. And, they should not be put into a situation where a lot of their focus is making it through the day without being stabbed or shot by someone who has no business being there.
No comments:
Post a Comment