Prior to the 1990 gun free zone act of 1990, signed into law by George H Bush the United States has always had a history of guns in schools but the guns being fired in the schools or on school grounds have a common thread the persons doing the shootings have been persons being told the word No or bad grades and then demanding the grades be changed. For along time its been people who have never heard the word no being told to them, for they have always had their way from being raised by parents who refused to teach them properly and that included the word no being told to them.
With the advent of students being bussed to schools away from where they lived to make sure that schools were racially balanced in the 1970’s led to students not being surpervised by their parents or their parents being able to attend parent-teacher meetings. As schools aged, they were not maintained as they should have been which led to bigger schools being built to handle larger student bodies. The parkland school that is in the news currently has 3,158 students versus 125 teachers and staff employees. As schools have grown larger and the staff to student ratio has increased so has the likelihood of minor violence to extreme violence grows.
During the 1970’s the average graduating class size ranged from 85 to 150 students, in 2017 the average high school class graduating is nearly 1000 to 1500 students. Going from roughly 14 students per staff member to close to 40 students per staff member. We need to go back to neighborhood schools where the parents have a greater input on a students life instead of sending them off to the high school factories where their parents have less impact in their lives.
It would be better spent on local neighborhood schools than a school busing system budget that is nearly the same size as the entire school district budget.
A Man's Musings 