Just a Guess but Apparently Trump Will Stoop to Anything to Deflect

What's the latest deflection (I mean besides trying to get away from the Russian issue and Stormy Daniels via firing Rex Tillerson by tweet)?
After a gunman marauded through Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month, conservative commentators — looking for a culprit — seized on an unlikely target: an Obama-era guidance document that sought to rein in the suspensions and expulsions of minority students.

And this week, President Trump made the connection, announcing that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will lead a school safety commission charged in part with examining the “repeal of the Obama administration’s ‘Rethink School Discipline’ policies.”


In a bruising interview on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Ms. DeVos said that the disproportionate discipline issue “comes down to individual kids.” She declined to say whether she believed that black students disciplined more harshly for the same infraction were the victims of institutional racism.
“We’re studying it carefully and are committed to making sure students have opportunity to learn in safe and nurturing environments,” she said.
Reaction?
“Yet again, the Trump administration, faced with a domestic crisis, has responded by creating a commission to study an unrelated issue in order to ultimately advance a discriminatory and partisan goal,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel at NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc.
To note:
Black students have never been the perpetrators of the mass shootings that have shocked the nation’s conscience nor have minority schools been the targets. But the argument went that any relaxation of disciplinary efforts could let a killer slip through the cracks.
To which I'll add, that of all the mass shootings, the overwhelming majority are at rural and suburban high schools, not urban ones.   

And this means all kids:

The “Rethink Discipline,” package that Mr. Trump’s commission will examine includes guidance that the Obama administration issued on the legal limitations on the use of restraints and seclusion, corporal punishment and equity for special education students.

I'll let the last word come from the superintendent of Broward County where the last mass shooting occurred:
The Broward County superintendent, Robert Runcie, said that Mr. Rubio’s effort to connect the district’s discipline policies to the Stoneman Douglas shooting was misguided.

“We’re not going to dismantle a program that’s been successful in the district because of false information that someone has put out there,” Mr. Runcie said on Twitter. “We will neither manage nor lead by rumors."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday Open Thread

Why the Majority of the Board Needs to be Filled with New Faces

First Candidates for Seattle School Board Elections 2023