Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Newtown - far, far away (and in the past)

The Woodstock District 200 School Board met tonight. You'd have thought there might be some discussion of the Newtown tragedy.

I went tonight, hoping to find the room filled with concerned parents, teachers, principals and staff, and even students.

So much for "hope".

There were six (only six!) in the audience tonight, including two employees scheduled for recognition and the spouse of one of them. Where were all the concerned parents?

When I addressed the Board during the public comment period, I learned that the Board has not met since the regularly-scheduled December 18th meeting. I hoped to hear about plans for increased security and safety, acknowledging that they might reveal exact plans. But there was not a statement of interest about it.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, didn't wait for school boards there to take action. He assembled a posse of 3,000 volunteers and put them to work outside schools to deter anyone planning a crime.

Did Sheriff Nygren do anything? (Is he even in town?) Did Undersheriff Zinke do anything to increase protection around McHenry County Schools? Most of them are in incorporated areas, where municipal police department would have primary responsibility for keeping the peace. Did Zinke work with chiefs of the numerous large and small police departments?

2 comments:

Ms.Hillary said...

How about Greenwood, Ringwood,Westwood,Hawthorne & Riley? All schools and under Sheriff patrol. Now that you made a question of iut, watch and they will actually do something. ANDY will have someone think this one out for him and then he'll issue a press release taking credit

Gus said...

Before the School Board meeting started, I commented that Sheriff Joe had 3,000 armed volunteers to deter criminals from Maricopa County schools.

The response? "That's scary."

I said, "What's scary is a bad gun with a gun and no good guy around with a gun."