Burlington School District Promoting 'No Bullying' Signs

For a while, I've been noticing these signs scattered in people's yards and school grounds.

It came to a surprise that the school district is now creating signs to the public to use to promoting anti-bullying.  But I believe that these so-called 'efforts' aren't doing enough.  I believe its more of a way to remove the bad image the Burlington Community School District or BCSD has with dealing with bullying, as well as other issues that they try to cover up.

They don't admit fault to it, but instead promote this kind of stuff so that they can fool people that they are changing for the good, even though the school suicides in the area have been going on for a long time.  In fact, shortly after the string of suicides in 1994, both the West Burlington School District or WBSD and BCSD  have claimed that they were working on taking care of the bullying issues and that they would be changing policies in order to help students with their issues.  Those changes were either insignificant or never placed.

I believe that because enrollment is decreasing down and that more people are going against these school districts.  From students who placed fliers on the cars  to students who stand up against the school. 

There was a system in place in having bullying records recorded and placed through a computer system. http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/BC-IA--Bullying-Database-1st-Ld-Writethru

The problem is that none of these schools in the Burlington School Districts were using this method for a long time.  I don't even believe that West Burlington School District uses this method either because both of these schools waste their money on selfish needs rather than helping to prevent bullying and promoting better education standards.

I don't believe that schools like BHS will change their philosophy and selfishness of taking care of the issue.  All that is important to them is the money and the manipulation of one's mind in believing into their crap.

Student(s) writes notes about BHS's faults and places them on car windshields

After reading this article, I was very impressed by how the note was well written and organized enough to have the news publicized  in The Hawk Eye.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/BHS-052312

I wasn't surprised though that there would be opposition from Evans and Tom Messinger, as well as the School Board President.  I'm not also surprised that each of these faculty are covering their tracks in order to hide any slip-ups they make.

Ordering school officials to look for students who placed the notes:

First, Evans orders school officials to look through the security tapes to see who had placed the notes on the cars.  Its as though she was looking at these individuals as dangerous criminals.  Newsflash, Ms. Evans.  These are not bomb threats or anything related to that!  Its a freedom of expression given to those to expose the ignorance BHS has been showing for years.  Violating their right of free speech violates their right to the 1st amendment to the constitution.  

If the notes are left on cars as part of a way to show the graduate's feelings about the school, as well as the faculty, then leave them the hell alone.  They have graduated from the school and these students have left their feelings to everyone on how they feel the corrupt school system really is.

Evans needs to move on and let go of the revenge cycle she has out of her.  She terminated one teacher and then attempts to terminate another teacher  She seems to want to terminate these teachers due to 'personal issues' that she doesn't want to talk about.  Even after the recommendation she made of terminating the second teacher was turned down, she still holds a grudge to that teacher.  She still doesn't admit the full reason why she wanted her terminated.  She seems more like a bully than a savior.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Burl-school-meeting-050812

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Teacher-051512

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Burl-school-pre-052112

"Its unfair to make blanket accusations without giving a specific situation"

This statement was made by Darven Kendell, the School Board President.

There have been plenty of specific situations being given of accusations in the past, like for example the counselor who neglected to take care of the situation Chris Taylor had to deal with in regards of suicide.  That wasn't handled properly and as a result, a suit was filed and won by the father.

I have heard parents and students talk about the nastiest things school counselors at BHS would say to their failing students.  Things like drop out of school, attend Job Core and/or Alternative High School, and statements like "you're not going to get the career you want and you should just give up."  When some of the incidents were confronted, there is only a brief discussion behind close doors, leaving the parents and students out of the direct line of communication.  The cycle continues and creates more problems for both the failing students and parents to have to deal with.  Counselors and teachers don't do enough to help struggling students in achieving their goal to graduation and to have a success outcome in a career that a student likes.

What Kendell probably wants from the students who made the notes is specific pieces of information of incidences that can lead to finding out who was involved with who and why, followed by covering up the specific situation(s).  After all, these "bullying programs" BHS had done, and probably now planning to do again, never really bring up about the string of suicides in 1993 caused by the lack of moderation and responsibility from the faculty to deal with these "specific situation(s)".  

The specific situations that I have brought up many times at BHS were never addressed properly and that these "specific situations" became more frequent over time.  Writing complaint forms, organizing meetings with the principal, etc. have never worked out in dealing with my "specific situations" that was being dealt with by some faculty and students.

Responsible Thinking Classroom:

This sounds very cliche.  While I have never been in such a classroom, the note that was left detailing the problem with the room, followed by the original idea of what the room is suppose to be used for, reminds me of something similar back in Oak Street.

When I did some temporary work at Oak Street as a Teacher Assistant as part of a high school class, I noticed some strange things going on whenever I pass this particular room.  There was a room that was designed for Behavior Disordered or BD students to attend to, followed by a couple of general education classes, like gym, home ect, music, art, computers, etc.  

Before volunteering to work at the school, I knew very little about the system of what punishments are given to students who misbehave in a BD classroom.  What I first noticed when I started working there was how the misbehaved BD students were punished.  The students whom had caught some certain act of trouble would be locked into a room next to the BD room, followed by a teacher aid guarding the outside door.  Screams and yelling could he heard from down the hall.  It wasn't clear how long the misbehaved BD student had to stay in there for, but it sure seemed to be too much for them to handle.  The odd thing about the room is that the only students that I witnessed being put in the room came from the BD room, which the BD room was always occupied by BD students.  

The original room BD room was located where the room where the student was locked up at.  What was more interesting is that there was no Health class during the time that I worked there, which seemed to be unusual.  Normally there was a requirement to have Health class, which would not only help teach students about the basics of health, but also sex education.  

Responsible Thinking Classroom sounds like a toned-down version of the BD room since any student can be put in there.  The question is whether or not the student is locked in there for a period of time.   Not only Oak Street's original BD room was used to lock up misbehaved BD students, North Hill had a similar thing going on as well.  There were a couple articles in the newspaper about children being put into a padded room, but weren't locked up behind a door.  

Pediatric psychologist considers time-outs effective

March 25, 2007

Taking Time

March 25, 2007

"It places a large emphasis on getting student input and what we can do to improve BHS." 

This is a quote from Messinger near the end of the article.  

This was a technique that was suppose to be used during the bullying program in classrooms back in 2005-2006 era, but had eventually quit on it within a few months.  It only occurred once a month, in closed classrooms, during early outs in 4th period.  The idea was to have teachers ask the students about whether or not the school is improving their ways to stop bullying and if there are any improvements needed to increase student potential and safety.  The class I attended during these sessions was a fairly large biology lab.  We don't spend the entire period talking about the subject, but instead spend about 10-15 minutes on it right after we are finished being lectured.  Not much input was put forth from the students, thus failed to try accomplish bullying and student potential troubles.

The idea wasn't really new nor was it successful enough to curve the students bullying and failing grades.  On top of that, the entire school is locked down and students are being watched by whomever keeps an eye on the cameras, which being the faculty and the school's resource officer.  It's more like a prison than it is a school.

Messinger and the other faculty giving opposition in the article can keep talking out of their butts, but its obvious that they're pulling a big stunt in order to prevent anymore students from leaving the district, as well as their precious governmental funding. 

Researched information

In one of my previous postings, I used some basic information about finding out one of the suicides that had taken place back in 1993.  Here are some information that can be downloaded for anyone to look through for themselves.

http://www.mediafire.com/myfiles.php#alpb1qhrpfebu

In addition to downloading the articles, I also will place them through the blog for everyone to see and read.  I'm planning to upload the original copies of the articles that were researched from the library and upload them to the blog for everyone to access.


Copy of Bully article from the original Psychology Today magazine.

Database file of the same article from the magazine.

A book written about bullying that references the article from Psychology Today's magazine.

Two of the many Letters to the Editor published in the newspaper.  These particular pieces were written from outside the state.

An article written in Chicago Tribune about Curtis Taylor's death.

Updated research information on the student suicides

After a few hours, I came back with some research material about the student suicides in 1993.

I went through these four rolls of microfilm to look for newspaper articles listed as important dates.  Here is what I discovered.

An article was listed named W.B. teen-ager commits suicide  in The Hawk Eye on March 21, 1993.

The first of the three suicides occurred on March 19, 1993 at 2:30 a.m.  She committed suicide by a gunshot to the head.  Latricia Nacole, 15, of West Burlington, attended West Burlington High School.  She was a cheerleader for the football team.  She originally was a student at the Burlington School District, but was transferred to West Burlington the year before.

The news about the suicide was going around before authorities released any information about Latricia.








An article was listed named W.B. copes with 2nd teen suicide in The Hawk Eye on March 22, 1993.

On March 20, 1993 at 11:30 p.m., a second suicide was reported.  He committed suicide using a 12-gauge shotgun.  Jade Klein, 15, of West Burlington, attended West Burlington High School.  He received the National Merit Science Award, and enjoys the outdoors, fishing, and hunting.

Police and school officials identified five to six other high school students to be potential risks and the parents were asked to keep an eye on their children.  Half dozen students left the high school without alerting school officials.

The newspaper listed an obitchuary, but no photo was published of Jade Klein.


An article was listed named Police probe 3rd suicide in The Hawk Eye on March 23, 1993.

On March 22, 1993 at around 5:30-6:00 p.m., a third suicide was reported.  He committed suicide by shooting himself.  Curtis Taylor, 14, of Burlington, attended Oak Street Middle School.  He was involved in a school play and was featured in the December 1992 newspaper about a book that he wrote in regards of Vietnam as part of a class project.  He researched war at the library, looking for poems and songs during that time period.  A copy of his book was placed in the library at Oak Street school.

In the same article, George Rinker, 19, of Burlington, threatened to commit suicide on March 23rd at 1:20 a.m.  It wasn't clear though on whether or not he was a current or former student at the time.

After the report of Curtis's death, letters were mail out from Oak Street School to acknowledged the students' parents about the death of the recent student.

The letters were written out by Robert Dodder, President of Board of Education.

 Meetings were created for not only the affected schools, but other schools around the general area, such as the Burlington and Mount Pleasant schools.  Counselors were organized to work with students, as well as having support being given by Governor Branstad with bringing in state counselors.  Churches also did their part with setting up meetings in order to help prevent anymore suicides from taking place.  Letters to the Editor were published by students, as well as a couple of other individuals, expressing their emotions on the suicides.

The events unfolded from March 21st through the late end of the month.  It was unclear whether the discussion began on the 20th.  That is due to the lack of the entire March 20th newsprint.

An article was listed named Father sues school over son's suicide in The Hawk Eye on November 11, 1993.

On November 10, 1993, the father of Curtis Taylor files a suit against the Burlington School District.  On the same day of the suicide, Curtis told his school counselor Elwin Kendell that he was thinking about suicide.  Elwin wasn't able to reach Curtis's father at work.  He then sent Curtis home after making a promise to meet with him the next morning.

Curtis had some history of psychological problems and the father believed that he should have done more with his son on the day of the suicide.

He filed a suit because the school district failed to properly supervise and protect Curtis and other students at school.

His son was reported to be harassed and bullied by other students.  The school didn't do enough to stop the problems.

An article was listed named School district reaches settlement in The Hawk Eye on May 1, 1996.

In late April of 1996, the school district paid $160,000 worth of damages to Curtis Taylor's father.  In addition to the damages, a change of policies were made.

The district agreed to implement a plan for identifying students who are at risk for suicide and a list of responses to be considered after identifying such a student.  The new policy must be forwarded to the board for approval within eight months.

I looked into researching the names of the victims shortly after I looked through the microfilm, which lists articles from the newspaper.  None of the victim's names showed up in the special section for deaths, even though their names should have been added years ago for the listings.

Burlington and West Burlington School Districts: How these districts cover up their student suicides

The other day, I was thinking about the article that I read months ago about a memorial of a middle school student whom passed away due to a suicide.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Suicide-032412

What I don't understand is the fact that the Burlington and West Burlington School Districts' kept their mouths shut about the other suicides that happened toward several other victims that happened over the course throughout the years.

I recently came across an article by accident when researching student suicides in the general area. This particular thing I found was both shocking and unreal.  In March 22, 1993, a student by the name of Chris Taylor committed suicide due to the bullying issues he faced.  Here is an exert from the Psychology Today Magazine article:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/big-bad-bully

On the first day of spring in 1993, honor student Curtis Taylor took his seat in the eighth-grade classroom he had grown to hate in the Oak Street Middle School in Burlington, Iowa. For three years other boys had been tripping him in the hallways, knocking things out of his hands. They'd even taken his head in their hands and banged it into a locker. Things were now intensifying. The name-calling was harsher. Some beloved books were taken. His bicycle was vandalized twice. Kids even kicked the cast that covered his broken ankle. And in front of his classmates, some guys poured chocolate milk down the front of his sweatshirt. Curtis was so upset he went to see a school counselor. He blamed himself for the other kids not liking him.


That night, Curtis went into a family bedroom, took out a gun, and shot himself to death. The community was stunned. The television cameras rolled, at least for a few days. Chicago journalist Bob Greene lingered over the events in his column, and then he printed letters from folks for whom the episode served largely as a reminder of their own childhood humiliations at the hands of bullies.


This not only hit magazines, it also hit into newspapers, like the Chicago Tribune!

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-04-28/features/9304280301_1_lunchroom-column-object

Because of the reticulated crap that the district refused to handle, a suit was filed against the district on November of 1993.  In 1996, the victim's family received a settlement of $160,000 from the damages caused by the district.  I'll provide an update to the research once I find the exact article of its entirely.

What was more interesting is the fact that this was the third suicide in a four day period!  Chris Taylor attended at the Burlington Community School District while the other two victims attended the West Burlington School District.  Currently, I'm doing research on the names of the other two victims.

The strange part of about doing some of the research is the fact that I cannot find the brief information about the $160,000 settlement and the beginning of the suit in November of 1993.  Clearly, The Hawk Eye is covering up the story too, not just the school district.

Several months ago, there was a reported listed in the newspaper about a death of a high school student.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/obit-Z-Brunken-091311

The night before this article was published, some talk was going around town about a suicide of a BHS student.  I was asked by two students at Notre Dam High School if I knew who it was.  I told them that I didn't have any clue of a suicide going on and that I didn't know who it was.

It is a possibility that Zachery Brunken could have committed suicide, however those details weren't realized to the newspaper due to him being underage.  It would be up to the parent(s) or guardian(s) to release any info to the media about the cause of death of their child.

The school districts and The Hawk Eye are trying to keep the suicides 'under wraps' and only reporting the most recent suicide, even though that particular suicide was almost identical as Chris Taylor's suicide involving the use of weapons, not to mention that Shaw's suicide occurred just three days before the 19th anniversary of Chris Taylor's suicide.  It may even fell on an anniversary on one of the other two students whom committed suicide.  Regardless, I think the reason the cover-up is happening is because it would not only hide their checkered past of handling bullied kids, it would also erase any mentioning about possible lawsuits that can be created to go against the school district for failing to control the problem.

With the thought about Daniel Shaw II, the parents are obligated to sue the school district just as easily as what Chris Taylor's family had done almost two decades ago.  The school district deserves to be punished for not only doing nothing about Daniel's case of suicide, but of the other students whom had taken their lives caused by bullying as well.

In short, here are some copies of articles taken from books, magazines, etc. in regards of Chris Taylor and his suicide.

http://www.mediafire.com/?alpb1qhrpfebu

North Hill School's growing problem: How this could have been avoided years ago

For the past few of articles that I read, North Hill School now has a problem with having limited space to have new students attending the school.....again.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Alignment-031412
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Burl-school-pre-032612
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/North-Hill-032712
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/North-Hill-Lawn-032912

Back in 2009, the school had finished construction of the new school.  The reason why the original school wasn't working had numerous reasons, particularly the lack of space students can attend the school.  The new school capacity, according to Cirriculum Director Laurie Noll, is 350 students.

The problem didn't start occurring this year. In fact, it started occurring in 2010!

This chart was taken from the School Digger website.  The chart was created from using the data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Dept. of Education.  The information can be accessed here.  Source

From the opening year of 2009 through 2010, there was a huge leap of students enrolling into the school system.  As far as 2011, I wasn't able to find statistics for that particular year, however the statistic for the current standards now is 452, according to Laurie Noll.


This fluctuation of students have created a similar problem that the Burlington School District should have foreseen and predicted better in order to prevent this from happening again, but failed to do so.  There are couple of reasons that could contributing to this, but I don't believe open enrollment is the sole reason why this is happening.

Open Enrollment

The first reason is the means of open enrollment.  Open enrollment is designed for parents and students to easily pull a student out from one particular school to the next.  This particular approach can be used for different reasons, like a student being bullied and the school refusing to take the course of action necessarily to remove the threat, distance from home to school is too far, friends and/or family attending a different school, lack of unique and helpful classes and materials needed for a healthy education, etc.   I'm all in for open enrollment as it will help students achieve better and healthy success toward an education, as well as making parent's lives simpler and less worrisome.

Here's what Noll has to say about the situation in the March 14th article.

"At North Hill, we have 452 students in that building and capacity is 350," Noll said. "At Black Hawk, there are 395 students in their building and they have a capacity of 500 students." 

Noll said 94 students living within the area bordered by Curran Street on the west, Central Avenue on the east, Division Street on the south and Agency Street on the north could switch schools. 

"Those 94 students, we would like to move from the North Hill area to Black Hawk," she said. "We have a building that is not being utilized to its fullest capacity. We need to have students in Black Hawk so we are utilizing that building." 

By making the proposed moves, Noll said class sizes in the schools will become more balanced. 

"There are kids from different boundaries in different schools," she said. "That needs to be corrected."

The problem I had reading this is that although there is an issue with one school lacking the amount of students, the areas these 94 students are in crime-infested areas.  Reading from many articles from the For the Record reports on criminal behavior, there seems to be a lot of crime on the south end of town than there is on the north side.  Parents who own their share of the 94 students probably can't move out of the area and feel that safety could be one of their main concerns, especially when the students would most likely walk home and to school through unsafe neighborhoods.  It could be other mix of reasons placed in there as well, but we don't know for sure.  Although it is still a problem having a lack of students attending schools like Black Hawk, there are other problems that Noll can realizes about students moving out of their short distances from school.

The problem with open enrollment in this town is that school districts don't research enough to estimate the proper amount of students that wishes to attend a school of their or the parents' choice.  Because of this students and parents have to battle with the school in keeping their child in enrollment, thus making an overwhelming amount of students attending the maximum limit.  The construction of the building should have been better planned out instead of increasing the student amount by a small margin.  This tries to prevent students and parents from seeking open enrollment because it limits students abilities from leaving the school of disinterest.

Parents and students moving into town/schools


Another contributing factor could be parents and students moving into nearby towns around the general Burlington and West Burlington area.  This helps increase the amount of student input.

I don't believe that open enrollment is the sole reason why its contributing to the overflowing problem.  I think its more on the lines of years worth of people moving into the town with their children, increasing the population of students attending the school and the open enrollment. Parents who are moving into the area for employment, healthcare needs, etc.; they are most likely to bring children along for the ride.  Those same parents might move those children to different schools in the general based on their preference and perhaps from word-of-mouth from the other parents or students.

Before the construction of Sunnyside, there were talks about Sunnyside not having enough room to fit enough students in their school.  One of the main contributors that was talked about was students moving in from other cities.  The school first made placements of mobile homes in order to be transformed into classrooms.  Each building was roughly one classroom.  When the population continued to increase, students were moved to different schools in order to start construction of the new Sunnyside school.  After the school was built, there was a large spike of students attending the school, which had more capacity to hold students that the current North Hill School.

A couple or so schools were probably built in the late 80's through the early 90's in order to fix the fluctuation of students going into North Hill school.  Some schools even implemented the mobile home classroom method, including North Hill.  It somewhat fixed the problem until the beginning of 2000 where the increase started to go up for North Hill, which lead to construction of the new school in the same general area.

What would happen now


With the current trend being seen, it will be probably likely that students would be eventually forced to move to other schools to reduce the amount of students coming into the school.  Another thing that could happen is North Hill could start placing new mobile buildings outside nearby the playgrounds, starting an old trend that could have been fixed when the decision of reconstructing the school was made.

With pushing parents and students aside from attending the school of their choice, families affected would be disappointing and have their backs turned from having their opportunity and right to have open enrollment.  Schools are suppose to have everything planned out from the beginning of how much capacity the school should hold instead of placing a limited amount of seating arrangements that would last for only a couple or so years.  I feel that the school district believe that they can demolish and rebuild any of their buildings to make it look more up-to-date when it comes to certain qualities, but never takes much of an account of how many students that could be brought into the school through open enrollment and new city students.

Schools that are affected, like Black Hawk, would lose funding if they continue losing students.  Building schools with limited amounts of seating can limit this rule, which can force parents to enroll into schools they believe isn't fit for their preference, can balance the schools with having the fullest amount of students attended he schools.  Another problem that rises is once the schools are yet again overfilled, both the school district and the city will help pitch in paying the construction fees of building another new school building, repeating the undesired effect of overfilling and limited seating for open enrolled students.

School security: A weakness for BHS

An article was published on March 11th detailing on how schools can't be 100 percent safe from a school shooting.  Here's the entire newspaper article.  I would like to thank my friend who has a subscription to The Hawk Eye that was able to give me the article.

BHS Principal Tom Messinger made a statement that says quote, "I'd like to think some of the things we have in place would prevent something like that from happening at BHS.  You can never totally predict what will happen, but I think we have a lot in place that can definitely minimize what will happen."

While there were some changes from the school since I had graduated a few years ago, it still wasn't enough to protect the school of its entirely.  The school may have a few bells and whistles in combating the risk of a school shooting or any other related violence, there are still exploits that students can go through in creating the risk. 

The Fort Madison High School received funding to prepare creating a security system to help improve the school's safety.  I'm not entirely sure whether the West Burlington and Burlington School Districts received a similar amount for it, but it seems that the Burlington High School is, by far, the weakest link when it comes to security standards for a school listed in the article.

Security Cameras

The picture above is resource officer Brenda Zahner at the Burlington Community High School, monitoring activity of hallways, entrances, and parking lots.  Click on the image to expand it.

According to the article, there are 16 analog security cameras and 25 digital cameras.  Some cameras are equipped with motion-detection meaning that if motion is detected, the camera will automatically record whatever is moving.  This is located on the West Burlington School District, which is mainly the elementary, middle, and high school that is located next to each other.

The Fort Madison High School has only 36 security cameras.  There is no mentioning of the cameras being either analog or digital.  They are monitored by the high school office.

At Burlington High School, there are only 64 security cameras and one resource officer.  There is no mentioning of the cameras being either analog or digital.  The cameras are monitored by the one resource officer.

The problem I have with security cameras is that they usually have problems.  I've have set up digital motion detection cameras up before and there are always problems arising.  Motion detection doesn't capture everything that is moving.  Usually there are options to increase the sensitivity of recording detectable movement, but its not always accurate.  It may either record a part of a scene of something moving or skip it completely.  Occasionally it can record the entire moment of the moving object's action, but not all the time.  Power interruptions, internet interruptions, corruption of files, lack of hard drive space, etc. are also other problems that can arise from using motion detection cameras, similarly to analog cameras.

The second problem I have with the cameras is whether or not these cameras are set up well enough to catch certain activity.  Cameras have limited point-of-view ranges that doesn't catch everything that passes by them.  Some high-tech cameras have a 360 degree view of the entire perimeter.  Its unclear whether those type of cameras are set up at the high school or not.  The photo that shows the resource officer, looking at the screen does show some form of camera-moving capabilities that could be rotated through the program settings.  Its unclear how much of a field-of-view it can detect or how far it could move.  It could also be only the zooming, volume, and screen adjustment options.

Another problem I had with the security cameras is the amounts of footage it produces.  Normally, there are cameras watching the school on a regular bases.  Primarily, the times that is watched the most is before school around 7:00 and after school, sporting events, dances, etc.  Occasionally there are events that goes on into peak hours before and after the normal schedule hours for school.  

Let's assume that all the footage was recorded and that there aren't any problems with the motion detection system.  There is about 8 hours in a school day, which adds up to 40 hours per week.  If there are 64 cameras in the school, that adds up to 512 hours of different footage created per day, equivalent of watching the entire thing for 21 days nonstop!  That doesn't even include the other events that goes on at the school!  Many incidences could be missed easily if the person(s) monitoring the screen(s)  isn't there to watch it.

This can be applied with the other schools as well.  The West Burlington School District does verify the time and day of which the incident took place in their surveillance footage, however its uncertain of how many of the faculty or resource officers are there that watches or reviews the footage.  Its also uncertain of whether or not they are trained well enough to spot out unusual activity that many others don't judge in seeing it as such.  If they are faculty members, they are less motivated and trained to watch constant activity on the camera screens than an officer.

In the article, the school resource officer admits that she does roam the halls on a daily basis.  The picture above shows her communicating on the phone while having a monitor system hooked up, preparing to watch the activity that is going on at the school.  There isn't any mentioning about office staff or other faculty watching the cameras.  Although there is a mentioning that Zahner trains other staff members, its unclear what she trains them for exactly.  Its unlikely that they are trained in watching suspicious activity that is going on in the security surveillance.  So the questions are: Where does this recorded footage go?  Is it kept to review the snippets captured from the motion sensitive cameras or is it recorded of its entirely?  Are there clips missing?  How much time is the resource officer spending reviewing the cameras?  Is the resource officer reviewing old footage to incidents that happened that she or others that originally seen?  We don't know.  Clearly it should have been addressed in the article that was published.   

Hall Monitor

   The pictures above is resource officer Brenda Zahner at the Burlington Community High School, monitoring hallways and communicating to one of the students.

Excluding the camera's recording activity, the resource officer monitors the school by roaming the halls.  The problem is although its done daily, its unclear how long the resource officer spends their time monitoring the hallways.  There is a lot of ground to cover when monitoring a fairly large high school.

When I attended BHS, the previous resource officer spent much of his time in his office.  Occasionally he comes out to monitor activity in the lunch room, but isn't seen much roaming the hallways.  Standards with the new resource officer of today could be different, however I'm not there to see if the changes she makes are actually happening or is just for newspaper publicity.  

The school has always lacked funds for various things, like improving text books and upgrading certain school materials.  They wasted millions of dollars on pointless things that doesn't help improving the students and teacher's lives as much as it should.  Paying for a resource officer to monitor the school would probably be expensive and too much to handle for them to hire another one or even to monitor the hallways more.

Because of this expense, they may have organized several staff members to do the job supervising the students in both hallways and in the lunch room.  The problem is that we don't know whether they are all there at once or only a couple or less are paroling area's, like the lunch room.  Its also unclear whether these are mostly teachers doing it or office staff members.  Normally the principal, the resource officer, Turner, Dean, and a couple of others occasionally does their part of monitoring students, however there aren't enough of them there to watch closely of what is going on with hundred of students, either passing by or eating at lunch.  Some of them have other duties than sitting nearby the lunchroom or walking the hallways.  They are mostly assigned in their offices, doing other specific tasks. 

It would be nice for the school to have at least 1-2 more resource officers, monitoring the large high school at a regular bases.  However, their budget isn't as important to protecting them as it is to receive governmental funds and increased teacher salaries that is requested on a regular bases. 

The cameras placed in the school would probably make it cheaper for the resource officer to stay there rather than trying to monitor the halls.  The problem is that cameras have their limitations and that human monitoring in the locations will help fix them.  

Locker and Bookbag Checks

While continue reading the article, I never found any discussion about locker and bookbag checks from any of the schools.  The only mentioning of it was at the end of the article where Bruce Snodgrass says quote, "You want to be able to say we can catch it.  Unless you are searching every backpack and every student coming into the building, I don't know if any district can 100 percent say somebody can't get in here with a gun."

Several months after we had the first couple of bomb threats discovered written on the bathroom walls, there has been discussion about locker and bookbag checks.  It seemed like that every locker and bookbag check we had while attending the school that it was announced early and ahead of time.  I remember one student that I attended class with brought his bookbag into the back corner of the classroom shortly before the checks would begin.  The student never came back for the bookbag until the end of the school day.  A couple of other students have offered me to hold onto their stuff, wrapped in magazine pages.  

While I suspected that students are trying to lend other students items that shouldn't be on the school grounds, it still continued through my senior year.  A couple of students I knew carried switchblade knives on them.  One day, one of the students were caught with it it out near their locker.  Although charges were made and other punishments were made, the student continued going to the school.  

Several months before the incident occurred, a former teacher had offered a large knife to a student whom was recently released for assault and drug charges.  The purpose that was given to use the knife was to perform with it as part of a practice play since the original fake prop of it wasn't purchased or made at the time.  The student's part in the play was to chase another student up and down the stage's steps, weaving around the sitting areas where the audience would sit near the stage, and then finally back up the stage.  We had to make the promise to the teacher to never let anyone know about the play practices in regards to the knife chasing scene.  After a while, a fake one was made and then eventually used for the actual performance in front of the attendees.

These 'checks' were nothing more than distractions that didn't do any good in dealing with reducing any illegal materials that were being processed into the school.  The officer's dogs, as well as the officers are the only ones that are able to check the lockers and bookbags that are in the lockers, but they are unable to check the students themselves for illegal materials.  Classrooms open up to areas of the building where it makes exceptions in checking the area for such items.  Doing that however would take up even more time and thus result in cancelling school for the day.

A system was talked about years ago, but was never implemented and that was metal detectors near each of the entrances.  If the high school is willing enough to use the money they have to set these up, maintain a private, randomized, and frequent locker checks; and forbid students storing their bags in classrooms; that would help increase the chances of catching someone with something that isn't allowed on the premises. Sadly, the school district does what it wants to do and that is waste money on non-helpful means for student and faculty safety, as well as improving their lives of education.

Lockdowns

Attending the high school with lockdowns were harsh and uneasy for many of us.  Privileges of leaving the room were limited and had to be escorted by a faculty member.  The most extreme thing that was done against the students was the limited passes we could use to go to the bathroom each week.  Many students have the tendency of using the bathroom due to variety of reasons.  If the passes were all used up, they can still be escorted to the bathroom; however the student would then receive a 10-15 minute after school detention.  Because of this, many students and parents complained and argued with the school for creating this unfair rule.  It was later reversed.  Depending on how many students needed to leave the classroom, it varies with time of which a student has to wait to be escorted from their rooms to go to a destination and back.

Classroom doors were locked from the outside, but not the inside, which was useful to prevent any intruders from walking into the room.

There were some entrance doors that were always unlocked, which I had discussed in my Letter to the Editor.  As far as I know, they could be fixed by now with the security sweeps that are made.

The West Burlington Schools has many security practices that seems to help with protecting their schools.  Things such as practice drills, alert systems, even having officers come over and examine the security to see if it checks out.

For the Burlington High School, it doesn't have any of these.  Most of the time the school is already in a lockdown mode.  There are no alert systems or people examining the security top to bottom to see what the school is lacking and how it should be fixed.  The practice drills do occur according to Messinger, however when I attended, it was a whole different story.  There were no practice drills, just the entire building locked down the entire time.  The only alert system them have is the cameras being watched from the inside.  If something happens, its up to the resource officer, the school's camera's, and locked doors to deal with it.  

That concerns me that students who are attending classes at the local college or leaving for their senior privilege access aren't trained to deal with a current lockdown.  When I left the grounds for senior privileges, I could easily access the doors behind the metal and wood classes, as well as the two other doors that were unlocked in the other building of the school.  Because of this new system, students have to go around the entire way to access the main door or by the cafetiere to get in through a buzzer.  

When I attended the school, there was a system that was setup where a teacher can use their ID to access the lock to each particular door of the school.  I was able to grant access to a couple of these doors by borrowing a teacher's ID tag to get into a specific building or door.  That was only a couple of occasions that I had accessed doing it.  I'm not sure whether the same system is still in place or not, but I felt that it was easy access to get through.  Borrowing a card from a teacher or other faculty member can easily grant whomever owns the card access to the school.  Hopefully the system has changed around where cards are more restricted and shouldn't take old ID cards from previous years to gain access.

Bullying and fights

Messinger comments that "One of the bits of research shows the more engaged the student is in school, the less likely they are to drop out and the less likely they are to fail classes."  That isn't always the case as humans vary with attitudes when it comes to school.  Working on an education at a high school isn't as engaging as working for a college degree at a university or a college.  The high school I attended has low standards of challenging students to their fullest potential, thus making it easier to slide through certain courses.  The material has repetitiveness and its nothing new.  Being engaged in school does not solely prevent a student from failing or dropping out of school.  It depends on their situation with life, such as physical or mental issues, family and friend conflicts, lack of parental guidance, etc.  Students go through many problems with their lives, especially with bullying.  

The big problem why there is such a problem with dropouts and failing students in school is the school itself, as well as a lack of guidance.  Having to hear parents and student's stories about their councilors giving failing students negative advice to drop out of school because they lack confidence isn't going to help.  Jack Wail and Mrs. Clemenson are the two councilors I hear about the most from parents and students who have a problem dealing with their negative feedback given to failing students.

Tom Messinger, on the other hand, tries to find an unreasonable way to punish the conflicting students instead of one of the students of whom were creating the conflict.  Having to deal with much of the bullying throughout high school, Tom loved to twist the story that was made to him around so that both me and the conflicting student would appear to be the two troublemakers that started the conflict.  Parents who originally had their children removed from the school expressed to me that they didn't like how these things were going on at the school and that their children were moved to the West Burlington High School in order to avoid anymore conflicts from both the faculty and the students bullying them.

I made plenty of discussion items listed in the Letter to the Editor that expressed other matters that happened in the school when I was attending there.  Its absolutely pointless for faculty and students to start bullying the students who have the least say in trying to resolve a issue that no one is able to receive help from, except from their families.  I too had to deal with a lot of the mess of bullying, but thankfully never received a councilor's two-cents worth or fought anyone.

The verdict

After going through most of the details listed from the article, I conclude that the West Burlington School District is much more safer than living in the Burlington Community School District.  I'm confused why schools like Leopold, James Madison, and the rest of the grade schools from the BCS District wasn't listed in the article as they had some form of security methods placed in the past as well.  Although I may have not attended the school, the information listed in the article, as well as the positive feedback I heard from parents tells me that this school is much more comfortable and not-too-restricted style is the best place to have a child attend school in the general area.

As for the Burlington High School, it has very poor standards when it comes to dealing with security.  Attending the entire four years at the school, two of which were lockdown years; and hearing parents and students complain about the crap the school pulled on them, its safe to say that the school isn't worth mentioning as a possibility to attend school there to feel safe and secure from everyone.  Of all the things I seen and witnessed, I see no point of recommending anyone to attend to the horrible school.

While schools may not be able to be 100 percent safe, there is still room for improvement in making it become better and safer.  While one district strives to make honorary improvements and practices, the other leaves little to no room for honorary improvements.