The girl accused of stabbing two classmates at Snohomish High School recently was known to have violent tendencies---yet the school couldn't do anything to protect the other students. Not even notify parents.
Something is very wrong with this.
In 1996, Barry Loukaitis killed 2 of his classmates and a teacher at Frontier High School in Moses Lake.
Court cases that followed showed that Loukaitis had exhibited threatening behavior before the shooting.
Other cases, from Springfield Oregon, to Columbine High School have had a common thread. The school knew the there was a problem but couldn't alert others or even take precautionary actions.
How did we get to this point? What has led or driven us to this obsession with student rights and student privacy?
Judith Billings, former superintendent of Public Education, told the Seattle Times this past weekend, "It's a difficult situation, there's no two ways about that, and it's much more common than people are willing to admit."
But why are people unwilling to admit to the complications that is killing and injuring students?
Along with the right to free education, according to Washington State and federal administration codes and laws, children also have a right to privacy.
Too much privacy. But, why?
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Revised Code of Washington and Washington's Administrative Code Title 392, according to the Times, provide this level of privacy to every student.
But why does each student require this level of privacy? Excluding their own parents. Restraining school districts from parental notification on important issues pertaining to the child's safety.
In fact Nathan Olson, spokesman for the state's superintendent of public instruction, says schools can't disclose information about a student's educational needs, health issues, behavioral problems or even most criminal convictions.
Five months before the accused girl stabbed 2 of her classmates at Snohomish High, this same girl had threatened to kill another student's boyfriend.
She had been given counseling at Kirkland Psychiatric hospital and declared "safe to return to school." Parents and students were unaware of the potential danger.
This is clearly a multifaceted problem---a catch 22 for the schools.
Kristen Foley, spokeswoman for Snohomish schools, says the district is reviewing its policies and procedures "to make sure that students' legal rights, as well as their legal rights to an education are protected."
Reviews are always conducted when bad things happen. However, it seems it may be time for more than a review.
In recent years, student privacy and autonomy from parents has become a major issue. A child's privacy "rights" has evolved to a point where parents are, for the most part, excluded unless the child owes the school a fee or is in legal trouble.
While there are certainly family situations that dictate that a child is protected from abuse or some extreme family dysfunction, the vast majority of children do not live in that kind of situation.
More than a generation ago, secular progressives began in earnest to indoctrinate children with the secular progressive worldview, as opposed to a more conservative, perhaps Judeo-Christian one held by many parents.
Since the 1980's most of us know the UN has aggressively pushed a global agenda, with policies and procedures that undermine parental authority, transferring authority over the child to the state or its agencies. All this under the guise of protecting children and their "rights."
These so-called "rights" are enforced against the parents and include "fundamental" rights to "privacy," "freedom of thought and association" and the "freedom of expression," all designed to undermine parental authority and elevate the state.
Public education is the epicenter of the movement. The facilitator.
In 2008, Planned Parenthood Foundation's "Stand and Deliver: Sex, Health and Young People In The 21st Century" was rolled out---with passion.
It became the hinge point for an acceptable cultural and moral transformation among the young---the students. By implementing this program in public education, they were able to define Judeo-Christian values and morality as repulsive and regressive, undermine parental authority while mandating so-called comprehensive sex-ed for children. To keep the kids safe.
"Stand and Deliver" has hardly kept them safe. Our kids have been oversexualized and their innocence stolen by a force of evil presenting itself as an angel of light.
Perhaps unintended, but none the less deadly, the separation of children from their parents influence, necessary to accomplish "Stand and Deliver," is putting children's lives in physical danger.
Until parents reclaim public education or completely abandon it, it will roll on under its deceptive banner of "safety for kids" while destroying the very children they profess to be helping.
Both legislation and policy followed the resolve to steal the hearts and minds of the young, while re-educating them in the ways of progressive relativism, all under the lie of "protecting" the children.
Now we are reviewing our policies and procedures.
We need a fundamental re-set of our priorities and our beliefs. Not a review.
May God help us.
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