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.

These are so beautiful, it’s a shame to rake them up.

John hauls them into the back yard where we used them to mulch all the rhododendron beds each year.

Roxie and I always marvel anew at just how big big-leaf maple leaves are.

And my precious little gingko.  I talk to all my trees, but this one gets a special thank you for never forgetting to turn yellow and remembering, when springtime comes around, that its leaves are supposed to be that amazing fan shape.

Gingkos are very slow growing, and I had to get one small enough to haul home in the Subaru, so I will not live to see this one grow up.  Strange to think, if I were to die today, people would say, “She had a good, long life.”  And that’s true.  Nevertheless, even when I’m not here to remind it, this beautiful tree will remember to make fan-shaped leaves and to turn yellow every October.

For example, do you really want to know what the Framers meant by “a well-ordered militia”? Clearly, they had in their recent memories the tyranny of the British. They were not thinking that someday we should be armed to take out our duly-elected officials with Uzis rather than at the ballot box.

This is one of the 100 questions prospective American citizens must learn the answers to.

Last night, I was telling my Citizenship class about our upcoming local election. Using it as an example,  I had a hard time convincing my students that voting is really all that important.  It will be much easier a year from now, even though a lot of our presidential campaign rhetoric is lost in translation.

Only one item on our ballot this time. A local issue.  I have received lots of expensive mailers about this.  Of course, in Oregon, all voting is by mail as well, and I will be receiving my ballot soon.

No “going to the polls” here, and we have virtually nonexistent voter fraud.

Here’s the deal:

We need improved public transportation, and somebody has to pay for it. Ideally, the people who use it should pay for it, but this is not an ideal world. The choice on the ballot asks, “Who should pay for it?” Employers (which could be the hospital or the doughnut shop owner)? That would be a “yes” vote. Or should property owners pay? That would be a “no” vote.

As a home owner, I can see on my property tax bill that I make generous contributions to local public education and to public transportation— which neither I nor anyone in my family has every used. Nevertheless, I am happy to support both. Now, I have to decide whether I can afford to support public transportation at a higher level or whether I should look to the owner of the doughnut shop to do so.