Just got this in an email:
Jesus Harold Fucking Christ, why am I just now hearing about this!?!
Brave souls, that office staff. I can only hope they were armed! Walking right up to a man like that. Wow.
Anything short of full lockdown would have been completely irresponsible.
Well thank god, I hope he was appropriately tazed and beaten.
Was he carrying a clock?
No mention was made of the suspect’s nationality or religion.
What was the question again?
If there was a Catholic church nearby he was probably a Bishop.
Looks like they handled it they way they should. While it turned out to be a non event there is still a question as to why an adult would wander around a school. Most parents would appreciate the heads up on how the school staff handles that kind of a situation
It also looks like you find the whole situation silly.
I think that the staff handled the situation better than you did.
School shootings are bad, because they can lead to things like this.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, we may just have to disagree on this, because I’d wager that most parents, meaning more than 50%, don’t care if they get these sorts of emails. I certainly don’t feel that I need to know how they handle a man taking a shortcut across school property. That most definitely falls squarely into the category of “unimportant minutia I don’t need to be bothered with.”
Moving in silent desperation,
Keeping an eye on the Holy Land.
A hypothetical destination, say,
Who is this walking man?
Well, the leaves have come to turning
And the goose has gone to fly,
And bridges are for burning,
So don’t you let that yearning pass you by.
Walking man, walking man walks.
–James Taylor
To Queen’s level four?
Guys, my kids aren’t pawns for your joke making.
I have to disagree. School shootings are bad for reasons that have nothing to do with things like this.
Thinking about the schools I attended, cutting across school property was a shortcut from neighborhood to the main road.
I dunno - I don’t tend to see a boogeyman around every bend…
Strangers aren’t tolerated on school grounds any more.
Should they be?
You’re right. The OP shouldn’t have made fun of this very serious situation…
So is the perimeter of the school grounds fenced? Are no trespassing signs posted? Are gates locked?
These days, they often are. I find it annoying that in my very small town, things like signing my kids out of school requires prison-like multiple buzzer doors. This has taken some expensive re-engineering of schools that were built in the “open campus” days.
OTOH, I don’t live that far from Sandy Hook.
So the question stands: should strangers with no particular school or parent business be tolerated on school grounds these days, regardless of how well secured the grounds are?
Americans are afraid. They are proud of how scared they are are so enamored of their own fear that they seek out even more reasons to be afraid. So any excuse to be afraid must be immediately embraced.
The school was attempting to defuse the terrified parents who would have seen this as another reason to be even more afraid. And to brag about it.
Nice try, but you’re gonna have to case the place yourself.
There are no gates, there’s a partial fence along 2 sides of the property but there’s a big opening in the corner where they meet. There aren’t any “no trespassing” signs, it’s public property and people aren’t prohibited from it in any way. There are signs on the playgrounds on that same property stating that they’re for school use only during normal recess hours, but that’s to keep the stay-at-home moms and nannies away, I assume.
The school staff acted responsibly by engaging with this person.
The school administration acted stupidly by turning a non-event into a thing.
This need not have been a thing. Certainly not an email to all parents alerting them that their children are, ‘OMG, still alright 24 hours after nothing happened!’.
If the schools insist on this level of helicoptering then they: a) cannot complain about the level of helicopter parenting, and b) must agree to send an email to all parents every hour on the hour saying, “It’s X o’clock and all is well.”
That way, if they miss the hourly check in with parents, someone will surely have the sense to call the authorities.