Also, the teachers there and the union keep sucking up massive public dollars while promoting students who are several grades behind, which is most of them in some schools. And El Concho wonders where we could find any money to help fund other options because the dems start with the assumption that the deadwood, failed programs will always be funded. And that may be. But that is where the money is already.
Chicago is throwing plenty of money around on left of center programs, while Illinois has the worst unfunded pension problem in the country.
Many of these schools where shooting has occurred- take Parkland as an example- or even the Michigan case- have persistnent problems with marginal creeps hanging around - teachers want them out but they are still milling around. Most with mental illness waiting to explode on to your kids. And then we talk about prosecution and liability by the school etc. Bullshiite. The accountability and oversight and involvemtn by parents needs to be more upfront. If your kid is going to a school where everything is basically a stranger to stranger type of interaction. You know some of the kids but there are thousands of creeps mixed in. The teachers know some of the kids but there are thousands that are just lone wolfing around, you need to choose a different environment and schools need to pay a price short of criminal behavior and being sued- simply that parents dont want to fund them and are leaving with their dollars. This business of going to a school where some creep just raped another studend at another school last week and was transferred and was dropped into your school is BULLFEATHERS!!!!! PASADENA, Calif., Sept. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Californians for School Choice have officially submitted a landmark school choice initiative titled, The Education Freedom Act, to the California Attorney General to ensure the proposed initiative be placed on the November 2022 general election ballot. The Education Freedom Act, if approved by voters, would bring true school choice to all K-12 students in the state who choose to opt-into the proposed program. The initiative is designed to ensure that state education funding will follow the student. "Under the Education Freedom Act, the money will follow the student instead of the zip code," said Mike Alexander, chair of Californians for School Choice and a lead proponent of the school choice initiative. "Parents wanting to leave the disastrous public school system would receive a yearly tuition credit of $14,000 per child to attend a private or religious school of their choice and save any money left over for college, vocational training or other qualified expense." The Education Freedom Act has four key components: An Education Savings Account ("ESA") will be established for each K-12 child in California on request. The Act treats all K-12 California students equally. Each year, that account will be credited with the student's share of what are known as Prop 98 funds. That share will rise to over $14,000 per year. The Act is designed to be tax neutral and does not impose any changes to public education. All programs under Prop. 98 will continue as before. Students who leave public school will have their fair share of Prop. 98 funds only, which will follow them to the accredited private school of their choice Parents can direct those funds to a participating public, charter, or accredited private or religious school. Private schools must be accredited and conform with local health and safety standards. There will be no curriculum or hiring requirements. There are no caps on the savings account. Any unspent funds will accumulate and can be spent on college, vocational training or other qualified educational expense. Funds not spent by the time a student reaches age 30 will be returned to the treasury. The Education Freedom Act is designed to encourage free market competition, according to Alexander. "This will cause schools, both public and private, to improve performance and lower costs to get their fair share of education dollars. By empowering parents to take advantage of how schools will have to compete for funding will lead to improved customer service at all schools, both public and private," he said. Leaders of Californians for School Choice, a citizen group of grass roots volunteers who want to expand the education opportunities for all K-12 students in California, believe that one of the side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting shutdowns of our state's classrooms, was parents learning the failures of California's public education system. They also realized that many who stayed lacked the resources to home-school or take advantage of higher performance private schools that stayed open. "Trapped in the worst schools by their poverty and their zip code, poor and minority students suffer the most," said Alexander. "A poor education ensures that the cycle of poverty will continue. Without equal access to a quality education, future Californians will lack the knowledge and skills they need to participate fully in the complex economy of the future."
If my kid gets assaulted and harrassed at the local school then I call the police and get a lawyer and watch how that is addressed. If someone in the school commits a crime then you call the cops an go to the school board. Vouchers are not a crime prevention tool. What you are saying is that if a school in the middle of South Chicago is surrounded by violence the parents should be handed vouchers to send their kids to private schools far away...as though they can afford daily roun trip transportation and private schools will simply accept kids with no requirements attached to it.. they are private schools for a reason. You are accusing us of binary thinking but you have not even fleshed out your own fantasy idea.....
Hate to talk the book, but I can't understand why schools aren't buying these systems. About Evolv Technology Evolv Technology (NASDAQ: EVLV) is a leader in weapons detection for security screening, securing the world’s most iconic venues and companies. Its mission is enabling a better experience and better security for venues, creating a safer world to work, learn, and play by transforming physical security to make everywhere safer. It gives sports fans, theme park visitors, concertgoers, shoppers, employees, students, and others peace of mind so that they can gather without fear of violence. Its security screening has scanned more than 100 million people, second only to the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the United States, and its technology combines powerful, advanced sensors with proven artificial intelligence (AI), security ecosystem integrations, and comprehensive venue analytics to reliably detect threats 10 times faster than traditional metal detectors. Evolv Technology, Evolv Express®, Evolv Insights™, and Evolv Cortex AI™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of Evolv Technologies, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. https://www.evolvtechnology.com/industries/schools
red states have failing schools too... it has nothing to do with party but again you only see things in red and blue... Are you saying red states such as Texas and Florida have no poor neighborhoods with failing schools??
GiveEvolv: A Step Toward Ending Gun Violence in Schools Sep 8, 2021 Today we announced the formation of GiveEvolv, a new charitable organization that provides need-based grants of Evolv Express weapons detection systems to K-12 schools in the United States that otherwise would be left vulnerable to gun violence. I would like to share the backstory of GiveEvolv and explain why it is so important to our mission. The threat of violence in schools is personal for me. My daughter is a second-grade teacher. Every tragic headline about an attack on a school sends my mind racing with "what if" scenarios that never fully fade from my mind. This issue haunts me as a dad, as a citizen, and as the CEO of a company focused on keeping weapons out of all the places where they are not welcome. For years I, like most of us, felt powerless to do anything to protect my daughter and all the other innocents who learn and work in schools. So it was incredibly satisfying when I joined Evolv and saw our Express weapons detection successfully deployed in a few South Carolina schools. However, that satisfaction also came with a tinge of frustration. Why? Because I knew that many vulnerable school districts wouldn't be able to afford our current Express product. We designed and priced Express with commercial facilities like stadiums, industrial workplaces, casinos, and tourist destinations in mind. We knew from our research that while some larger school districts would have the budget and the scale to use Express, many simply would not have the budget for our advanced technology. We don't regret making the tough call to focus on segments where we could reliably deliver win-win outcomes, but leaving most schools vulnerable has continued to weigh on all of us at Evolv. When we started getting inbound interest from SPAC partners early this year, one of our most important criteria was alignment with our mission of making the world a safe place to live, work, learn, and play. All the potential SPAC partners said the right things about their commitment to our mission. However, NewHold was unique in proposing that their partners dedicate a portion of their personal proceeds in the transaction toward charitable expansion of access to our technology. The fact that they were willing to put a portion of their personal income from the transaction on the table was inspiring, and our executive team decided to follow their example. The result is GiveEvolv. After we agreed on the core concept, we quickly settled on educational institutions as the initial beneficiary of GiveEvolv grants. We chose schools for two reasons. First, the threat is heartbreaking, and the impact is horrific. I’m not going to review all the incidents in this decade. Suffice it to say that since the Columbine High School shooting in April 1999, more than 256,000 students have been victims of gun violence during school hours. The second reason we chose education was that the resources to address the threat to schools are heartbreakingly scarce. Without help, we knew that advanced weapons detection technology would not come to many schools for years. Every school has policies prohibiting weapons on campus, but their ability to enforce their own policies is incredibly limited. Schools that can afford to install conventional walk-through metal detectors risk creating a prison-like environment that makes students feel like criminals. But more importantly, metal detector screening does just that. Detects metal. It does not differentiate between a weapon and a laptop. Not only does this provide a prison-like experience, but it slows students from getting into schools, creating security threats for those waiting in line. And, worse yet, we've heard some security staff admit that when the morning bell is about to ring and the security line is backed up out the door, they just turn the metal detectors off and wave all the students in without any screening at all. Vulnerable students, teachers, and staff deserve much better. I've previously written about our vision for democratizing security. We intend to make high throughput weapons detection screening truly pervasive across all the places where people gather. GiveEvolv helps jumpstart our progress toward that vision. We won't be able to give Express grants to every vulnerable school immediately, but we do believe we can make a real impact for many vulnerable schools and then expand over time. I believe that parents and schools will be more willing and able to invest in weapons screening at schools once they see how effective and unobtrusive it can be. I also hope to bring down costs and simplify deployment of our products to the point that every school can enjoy the security and peace of mind that advanced weapons screening. I think we'll all sleep better when that day comes. We are still hammering out details of the GiveEvolv grant approval process. If you would like to nominate a school, you can sign up here. Peter George President & CEO Peter G. George has been Evolv’s Chief Executive Officer and President since January 2020. Prior to assuming the role of Chief Executive Officer at Evolv, Mr. George served as Chief Commercial Officer of Evolv from February 2019 to December 2019. Prior to joining Evolv, Mr. George served as President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Fidelis Cybersecurity, a company focused on threat and data breach detection, from March 2008 to August 2019. Mr. George also served as the Chief Executive Officer of Empow Cybersecurity, a company offering intelligent, AI and natural language processing solutions to reduce false positives during threat detection, from March 2018 to November 2018. Mr. George serves on the Board of Directors of Corero Network Security PLC (LON: CNS), including its Compensation Committee, since January 2019. Mr. George received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the College of the Holy Cross in 1981.
Again, you are trying to push school shootings as a problem a school voucher can solve and it is not. You’re throwing everything into a pot and calling it gumbo to further convolute the dialogue. As to school choice, that’s a state by state thing. There is some pros and some cons but school shootings is a national issue, as America is unique in the world with this repetitive problem.
Red states drag America down. If we compared NJ students to international peers NJ would be among the highest in the world. And don’t let these guys fool you with it’s a “cultural” thing either. NJ is one of the most diverse places on the planet.
It is a national problem that is exacerbated and become explosive along with many other signs of collapsing society. Mostly due to lefties imposing national policies and agendas that undermine the traditional strengths at local levels- family, school, church, community. etc. Lori Lightfoot tells us that crime is a national problem caused by a racist society. Now she is telling us it is local because businesses are not doing enough to protect themselves. Yeh, okay, whatever.