Criminals from Chicago and other out-of-town areas are moving into Burlington

Surrounding in and out of South Hill, including areas in and around Greenway are subjected with unusual criminal actives for years.  Theft, drug dealing and making, shootings, stabbings, assaults,  disorderly conducts, etc. have been increasing over the years in these particular areas.

Here are only just a few snippets of things going on in these areas.  There are others and more listed in the For The Record reports that I didn't list because it doesn't separate the incident areas with the specific ones needed for this post.  Many of the For The Record reports have more than one person listed located in other towns and streets.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Street-vendor-120911
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Shootings-072711
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Stabbing-070611
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Quiet-down-063011
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Guns-082410
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Crack-dealer-052910
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Robbery-stabbing-042710
http://thehawkeye.com/story/Smell-042210
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Robbery-stabbing-verdict-031210
http://thehawkeye.com/story/Knife-threat-110109
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Stabbing-102209
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Knife-attack-091109
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Robbery-082709
http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Dealer-job-061209
http://www.thehawkeye.com/Story/Stepson-041509

Here is a couple of map incidents recorded and placed by the Burlington Police Department at CrimeReports.com.  This range can only go from September 30, 2011-March 30, 2012.  Its located both in and around Greenway and South Hill regions.  Unfortunately, there isn't a map listed for decades of activity, which could be better in showing how serious the crime is in the areas.  Areas past the main downtown section has more criminal activity happening there than within the main downtown district.

Greenway

South Hill

Some areas of town are starting to receive new and unusual crimes popping up in safe and quiet neighborhoods. Thefts, break-ins, even people being stalked and chased from motor vehicle drivers. 

Housing and apartments pricing is cheap


One of the biggest impacts that are bring potential criminal individuals into this town is the cheap pricing of housing and apartments.


Here's a recent article about how Burlington's real estate markets are improving and how relaxed the local banks are in dealing with the housing market.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Real_Estate_032512

The housing market here is more cheaper and cost effective than it is in large cities, like Chicago.  Some criminals listed from the articles that were arrested has some backgrounds of living in the Chicago suburbs.  In large cities, there are expensive pricing for housing and staying in apartment complexes.  Many individuals have difficult time trying to either find a decent job to pay off the bills or to find loopholes that would help fund temporary needs.  Moving from Chicago to Burlington is only a four hour drive and going for the housing market would be the first step of obtaining a cheaper and easier way to stay in the town.

Areas, like Greenway and South Hill, are dominated mostly by mostly African Americans.  Most of which live either with family members or by themselves.  Some areas have some other racial backgrounds as well, some of which would integrate a multiracial living conditions, like a couple being the opposite of each others race, as well as kids that they own.  Green Way has some multiracial living conditions, which some could get along with the neighborhood, depending on the people's attitude and view on the situation.  Multiracial couples are usually widely accepted by many individuals in positive ways, while others are accepted in a different matter.  Its similar to religious backgrounds for couples and children as well, but for the main purpose of this post is for racial talk.

Greenway is full of criminal activities due to the low pricing of the markets and people having the opportunity to moving into these underestimated areas of crime.

Last year, there was an discussion of using $19 million dollars in renovation costs to make each of the buildings appear new and decent looking.  They were also given in the months ahead housing equipment; like stoves, toasters, sinks, etc.  The area is able to receive large subsidies under the federal Section 8 low-income housing program.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/greenway-040811

Months later, it was approved that $14.4 million dollars would be used in paying off the renovation related costs.  The money came from a governmental grant.  The limited partnership consisted of a Chicago-based National Equity Fund Inc., which gives them the right to own 99.9% of the property.  The .01% is split between Newbury Management and Kansas City-based non-profit Phoenix Family Housing Corp., which plans to offer low-income families at Greenway financial support services.

 http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/greenway-120211

With the renovations and assistance being given to Greenway and now owned mostly by a Chicago-based company and a Kansas City non profit corp., it creates a better and comfortable zone for newcomers to come live in areas like this.

City and state governmental assistance

Another thing that drives people from out of the city to live in the town is the city and state's governmental assistance.


Department of Human Services, Young House, and other assistance-based funding areas are creating relaxed and easy access for new and old-time Burlingtonians to receive funding.  Things like Medicad, food stamps, free or reduced lunches, assisted heating and cooling, assisted utilities, etc. are being offered to jobless and low-income individuals.  There are limited restrictions in receiving such funding as long as they are below the income line that is set.

There is also funding for rent that applies to a single parent and children living with them.  Mostly its applied to single mothers with kid(s) living with them and mostly come from cities like Chicago.  Because of this extra help from the governmental programs, all they would have to pay for is the utilities, which they can get a job with a low income low enough to stay in each of the programs and pay for the utilities and personal goods.

With receiving benefits from both the state and the city, including the companies that own areas like Greenway, living free with limited to none work status is easy pickings.  Some do deserve it better than others whom aren't taking it as an easy way out and never planning to become success anytime in the future.  The problem is that none of us can really weed out the ones who truly deserve from the ones who is truly undeserving. 

At South Hill, they don't receive the small extra resource from the companies whom are funding the Greenway projects.  however, they still have just as much access to the other governmental funding as everyone else is under there low income bar.

Recently, South Hill has a group called The South Hill Neighborhood Association that is looking into making the group a nonprofit 501(c)(3).  The group is designed for creating activities, looking for improvements in neighborhoods, etc.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/south-hill-011512

The problem I have with the program is that I never hear about a North Hill Neighborhood Association and whether or not they receive a similar status when it comes to nonprofit status.  In fact, trying to research the North Hill version of it, but nothing pops up.  North Hill is on the complete opposite of South Hill, which I never read or hear about it through the newspaper or The Hawk Eye website.  It could be listed under a different location and name, however there isn't anything I read about the North Hill side having one.  Is it only designed for neighborhoods with low income individuals and criminal-filled neighborhoods?

Police activity is more limited than bigger cities

Although many arrests are made on these individuals who live in crime infested neighborhoods, not all of them are caught and arrested.  Its pretty similar in cities like Chicago, however the ratio of officers and the funding they receive is much lower.  Because of this, officers are less likely to patrol alone in areas like South Hill and Greenway without calling backup.

South Hill, for example, tends to have speeders caught here and there.  When an officer pulls over an individual in particular areas near or in South Hill, they tend to always call backup.  Its not for certain whether its a procedure done in order to prevent an unexpected incident from happening or its based on the officer's view of the neighborhood.  As far as I know, officers could have incidents happen to them or someone they know when they patrolled the areas.  Whatever the case may be, the officer would feel uncomfortable about being an area like South Hill and would less likely patrol it more than the areas in the downtown district.

About close to 2 years ago, there was a discussion about South Hill and what the South Hill Neighborhood Association and the community can do about it.

http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/south-hill-091210

The meeting was created by Gary Thomas in response to a July 28 attack.  The attack that was listed didn't discuss the result and the purpose the gang of thugs jumped the kid.

Some word went out from a few cab drivers stated that a similar amount of individuals in a gang that size had to be the same ones whom had done a similar situation months after the pertained incident.  It occurred nearby Walgreens and Family Video where a kid whom was walking home was jumped by several  African American individuals, whom were believed to be in a gang.  What their real purpose was to steal the kid's iPod and then beat him until he was hospitalized.  It was unclear to whom had seen it and whether it was reported in the police or the newspaper under either a main article or a For The Record article piece or not.  Normally children whom are harmed usually doesn't have their names and incidents publicized in the papers unless the parent or guardian grants access for them to do so.

The January 2012 article discussed about placing either real or fake cameras in the parks.  The problem I had with the piece is that it lists the mentioning of dummy and real cameras, including their prices.  If they considered installing a dummy camera, someone can easily tell a fake from a real one by looking up price information and the brand listed on the camera equipment itself.  This would prove to be useless.

Standard security cameras, with night vision, motion detection, etc. can range as much as $150-$300 a piece.  Having to consider the most expensive seems to be a dead giveaway that its never going to be funded.  It may be better quality control in regards with dealing with finding individuals in the park, but the high price of placing such cameras in an area not as affected from crime as elsewhere isn't worth it.  Now placing something like the cheaper cameras can be worth it once they receive the non-profit status, but the question comes down to of whom will be responsible with collecting and distributing footage to both the neighborhood watch group and law enforcement?

Now and into the future

While its good to have a neighborhood association to find solutions to fix the issues and make some headway of dealing with the criminal issues, its up to the City of Burlington to fix their funding issues they been having for more than 20 years and start giving proper training and funding for police officers to become more prepared and more active than what they currently doing.  The city, perhaps the state, can create more restrictions to individuals whom are suckling the funding's money and refuse to improve their lives and give it to those who truly deserve by looking into their criminal backgrounds, as well as backgrounds from out of the city.  As far as with the housing market goes, there could be restrictions of criminals from receiving certain loans or benefits in receiving a home or rental of an apartment until their probation and other serious criminal charges are over and dealt with.

With the current trend we are heading, criminal activities are going to get worse if the city and the police department isn't doing enough with fixing the problem.  It will take a lot of money and dedication before we can see results of reducing the problem as minimum and frequent as possible.

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.