With all those school children walking out from their schools in protest of the draconing immigration laws, some California school principals decided to take action into their own hands.
Last week, Artesia High School Principal Sergio Garcia decided to grease the fence at around the campus of to keep kids from attending immigration marches.
“I just don’t think it’s appropriate,” parent Sylvia Gooden told the ABC Unified School District board during a meeting Tuesday. She said many students’ hands and clothing were coated with the wheel-bearing grease.
Their excuse for taking this measure, district deputy superintendent said it wasn’t to keep the the students from going to marches it was because they heard of a rumors of outsiders showing up.
The grease was applied earlier in March to identify people climbing fences to enter school grounds. An Artesia High School student was shot to death in Lakewood on March 11 and there were rumors outsiders might show up to cause trouble, district deputy superintendent Mary Sieu said.
That is mild compared to this atrocity, Worthington Elementary School Principal Angie Marquez imposed a lockdown that would not allow the children from going to the bathroom, and instead had to use buckets in the classroom.
The lockdown was put in place during the March 27 rallies. Tim Brown, director of operations for the Inglewood Unified School District, claims that the principal just made an “honest mistake” as she forced every student in her school to stay in their classrooms all day made to use a bucket in the classroom if they needed to go to bathroom. An “honest mistake,” huh, ya think?
In trying to keep her kids on campus, she decided to put her school into a “nuclear attack” lockdown.
“When there’s a nuclear attack, that’s when buckets are used,” Brown told the Los Angeles Times. The principal “followed procedure. She made a decision to follow the handbook. She just misread it.”
This is what Worthington parent Julia Campos told AP:
“Many of them were crying because they felt embarrassed,” she said. “One girl was afraid other kids would see her.”
Reasoning behind the madness:
Worthington Elementary School is seven blocks from Morningside High School, where less than 100 teenagers participated in the walkout. Administrators said they feared elementary school children could have been swept into the protests.
Yet, surrounding schools around Morningside High did not have any daylong lockdowns according to AP.
Is this what this country has come to, lockdowns? Keeping students from exercising their First Amendment rights by greasing fences and using buckets for toilets and this was just for a protest march. But what if it there was an Avian Flu outbreak? What then? Could you leave your child in school, if there was a mandatory lockdown? What if the principals decided to use a “nuclear attack” lockdown for this outbreak, what would you? My father is a professor at a university, he told me, that the university was ordered to put a lockdown on the dorms if their was an outbreak. This administration is turning our schools into fucking prisons. And I can’t be fucking angry about this shit! I am suppose to be calm and be logical.
Just imagine it was your kid in that school, needing to squat behind some fucking door. Just imagine sitting in that classroom, smelling it. Some may not be US citizens, but they are not animals. Have we lost our humanity? So I ask you, where is our humanity, because I am not seeing it. Where is our compassion, because I am not feeling it, either.
one of those diaries that I wish was attributed to bood abides, therefore being relegated to the satire file. The imagery of students being forced to urinate and deficate in buckets due to a democratic protest planned is further proof that we are descending into one of the inner rings of hell where fascism reigns freely. Ugh.
I wish it was satire, but when satire becomes reality – this country has to wake up. And wake up fast.
How can the ISD excuse that and make some in Kinder to do that or a 1st grader or any of them. How in the hell, can she ok, I will go with a nuclear threat. I not extreme bad weather? Modify it? Have a teacher walk them to the bathroom? My God, something humane. But for the ISD to say, oops, it is a mistake.
The practice is patently illegal. I’d bank on lawsuits being filed, and the teacher being fired before the year is out.
That is terrible, absolutely terrible. I’m at a loss for words really.
When I was writing it up, I too was at a loss for words, lets say, I had to bite my tongue.
Now I’m off to your site for some beautiful and calming photos before I go to bed. 😉
Despite the abuse of authority, we should probably be happy that these people are no longer in the classroom. I’d rather see them tucked away in an office than having real contact and influence on kids.
Once again, I am horrified and find myself wondering “why isn’t this all over the mainstream news?” Hopefully the stories will spread locally.
made Keith Olbermann’s top three “Worst Persons in the World” last night, but you’re right, Alice. This should be headline news on all the networks at every level. It is utterly appalling what happened to these students.
In yesterday’s LA Times, the stories were covered and I saw a link on Yahoo this morning too. There are no words to describe those “people”. XicanoPower is right to ask where is their humanity.
A few years ago, we DID have a county-wide lockdown of public schools… for a good reason. That was during the few weeks in October when the so-called Beltway Sniper was on the loose and randomly shooting people — including kids outside their school — around the DC metro area.
We had a genuine threat, and the Montgomery County (MD) schools dealt with it in a very straightforward fashion. The kids were kept inside, no outside recess. Windows were papered over so no one could see inside. Kids were kept inside until their bus pulled up to the door, and then escorted quickly to its doors. Letters from school administrators went home with kids on a regular basis, explaining new procedures and what to expect. This lasted until the two snipers were arrested, and the school administration was satisfied that the danger was over. (Their procedures have since become a model for other school emergency guidelines across the country).
That’s what emergency procedures are supposed to be… reasonable, evenly applied, carefully communicated to students, parents and staff, and reserved for real emergencies.
What they’re doing in those California schools is fucking ridiculous. Worse, it’s abusive. Those administrators have no place running a school. Students are human beings and deserve basic respect.
That is right I heard about those procedures. I knew there had to be so humane way to handle this something like this.
Maybe I am making an incorrect assumption, but It does not seem likely that such measures would be taken in schools with relatively affluent mainstream demographic children.
If the schools contain a sizeable number of migrant children, who might be likely to wish to march for human rights, then frankly, yes, the purpose of that school is indeed to prepare the pupils for prison.
And no, neither they nor their parents are considered to be human by the mainstream society, which is why the marches are taking place, because of a disagreement on this point.
I’m sure you’re right about this Duct…I’ve read several other articles on this story and it seems most of the names of the children or parents were Latino. The kids were told by the principal that the reason for this lockdown was because ‘something bad’ was happening outside -yeah so we know where that principals head is at concerning the demonstrations don’t we. Besides leaving impressionable kids who find out this was about people demonstrating in peaceful marches the idea that demonstrating is somehow ‘bad’.
More disheartening I thought was that only a few parents showed up at school meeting to protest what happened to their kids. While the principal continues to defend what the teacher did.
When I first read this story I was so shocked and disgusted that I didn’t even have any anger set in for several hours….my first thoughts just made me want to cry thinking about some little kid having to go to the bathroom in a bucket in front of the whole class…for what? And I bet if that teacher had to go to the bathroom she didn’t use the bucket…
Un-fucking-believable! I am just stunned. I would love to see my students stand up for the right thing and make their voices be heard.
And I am sure you are one of the best teachers we have in this country.
It is a bit off topic, since you are a teacher, that whole NCLB are you forced to start teaching to the accountability test?
Yes and no. I am forced to spend time in my class showing students how to handle the test. That, of course, takes time away from American Literature – which is the subject I teach.
The state of Michigan might change its test next year, to the ACT, so that will change what I do, again.
And watch.. Americans won’t care. They never do.
Great diary Xicanopower!
Isn’t that sad, but when it happens to there children, they want somebody to do something.
They’re all our children. All of them. That’s how I feel at least.
I guess that’s what makes me an unreasonable woman. 🙂
I am officially going to start looking into alternative places to live. This is not my country anymore. This so disgusts me I am at a loss. Of course the parents won’t show up at the schools where their migrant children are attending. They are afraid of being deported. Every effing day, something from bizzaroland comes out and I just shake my head in utter disbelief. How much more are we willing to let this go? Where the hell is the Fucking Outrage? These assholes(teacher and principal) need to be fired immediately. Schools are not prisons and they cannot MAKE these children stay ther or keep them in a classroom all day without potty breaks. What the frreak is wrong with these idiots?
Some parents did come out and asked questions, but were dismissed. But that was just some of them, and the rest who didn’t you are right, fear is a big thing.
When you do find a place, let me know.
I’m geering towards Costa Rica. Warm, beautiful and inexpensive. I think it may be time to start communal livving again. Only not here.
My sister and bf/finance went there for Xmas. They said the same thing you did. I’m sold 🙂
Off topic: You can make the ePluribus logo link to the ePluribus website like this one:
by replacing this:
<img border=0 src=”http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9793/siglogo259aa.jpg“ >
with this:
<a href=”http://www.epluribusmedia.org/“ ><img border=0 src=”http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9793/siglogo259aa.jpg“ ></a>
Thanks!!
Let me know too!
I understand the sentiment, but don’t give up. We need every good-hearted person to work to save not just the U.S., but mama earth, ya know? The U.S. will go even more downhill, destroying the world. But you’ll be happily ensconced somewhere you think is safe. For how long, till the a-bomb goes off? Sorry for being so cranky. Stay and fight for a future?
You say it’s not your country any more. Well, my ancestors were here before the Europeans, so in some ways I do sometimes wish we hadn’t been so lax with our immigration policies. ; )
I will have to remember that one. 🙂
(a couple hundred) surrounded the schools so the kids couldn’t leave. But I don’t think it was a complete lockdown. People seem to have lost their minds on a large scale.
don’t be a prick rule with this diary. How can that SOB of a principal still be employed. If those kids were white it would consisdered a kidnapping…that is fucking bullshit. I have always lived on a theory that those behind me never have to put up with the bullshit slight of hand racism a few us had to put up with.
Angie Marquez meet magdalinche..yourself in a mirror.
I’m feeling sick. I don’t know what else to say. Good Lord, what is next?