Who hasn’t seen the clip of a high-school student being dragged, desk and all, from a classroom by a uniformed officer? It’s pretty distressing.
But what distresses me even more is how this scenario should have gone down.

The school has a “no cell phone use in classrooms” rule. Teachers are charged with enforcing school rules and can be taken to task if they choose to look the other way so they can just keep teaching their classes.

This teacher told the student to put her phone away. I don’t know how many times. When the girl refused, the teacher had no choice but to call for help. The principal came down the hall and again told the student to put her phone away or leave the room. She refused and an officer was summoned to remove the student from the classroom. She again refused to respect school rules and school officials.

After that, things fell apart.

I’m sure that teacher wishes she had looked the other way and continued to teach her class. I’m sure the principal wishes he had told the student that she was suspended for an appropriate number of days and that he was calling in her parents to pick her up. I’m sure the security guard wishes he had taken a personal day off. Now I’m sure he’ll be doing that for the rest of his career. Lord, I hope so.

In a world where parents are secure in raising well-behaved children and are not interested in being popular with them, when the parent who should have been called showed up, she would have informed her daughter in no uncertain terms how ashamed she was of her naughty, disrespectful behavior. She would, at that point, have taken the cellphone into her own possession and said that from now on, during school hours, that phone would be in her own pocket. While suspended from school, the girl would also be grounded.

Not what happened. Now we learn that there is a Black Parents’ Association at the school and we have heard from its chair, who seems like a nice person who may be in way over his head in addressing this issue.

You can chew me out or un-friend me for mentioning it, but I have to ask: are there any other ethnically-exclusive parent groups at the school? Can you in your wildest dreams imagine a White Parent’s Group? Lord, I hope not.