Metro School Board: PFFFFT to your research!

Too bad I didn’t have money riding on this vote, because at least I could have made some cash on the outcome. I thought this afternoon, we’re looking at a 7-2 vote, and darn if I wasn’t dead on. Seven in favor of SSA, that is.

The public comment period lasted for more than two hours, with each speaker alloted three minutes. Nashville Sister says I was the most articulate speaker. She’s flattering me, but I thanked her anyway. Our attempts to Tivo this were unsuccessful due to the lack of start and end times for the program on Channel 3.

A large thanks to Metro School Board members David Fox and Mark North, who argued adamantly and eloquently against this policy, for a number of reasons that I found very compelling. Too bad I didn’t have a vote.

What I found most disturbing: Principals, administrators and school board members who argued in favor of the policy, saying they believed this would affect student achievement and behavior, many of whom even acknowledged that research says it does not. Research saying this does not work is certainly not a clear and compelling reason to violate my daughter’s constitutional rights. Your deeply held beliefs are not a clear and compelling reason to violate my daughter’s constitutional rights.

Way to take a great student, who will do nothing but pump up your test scores for the next 10 years, should I choose to leave her in public schools, and piss her off. Make her hate school. And for what? So you can feel better about the way students look.

I hate to be the one to tell you, but gang members will adapt. We had a student demonstrate tonight at the board meeting how easily weapons could be concealed inside clothing meeting the uniform policy. Their uniforms won’t be feeding any students breakfast or protecting them from gunshots outside their bedroom windows. Those problems don’t rightfully belong to the schools, but schools certainly deal with the consequences. And now, in a misguided attempt to "help," Metro Schools have taken an authoritarian stance that would have been welcomed in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. We may not like the fact that other people have freedom of expression, but every American citizen does, from birth on up. Without a clear and compelling reason in its favor, this policy is rotten to the core.