Franklin Schargel’s Blog

The Covid-19 virus revealed that teachers are essential to  a smoothly running society.  

In 2019, Kamala Harris, then a Democratic presidential candidate, said at a rally, “We are a nation and a society that pretends to care about education.”

How much is a good teacher worth?

If you want to know the answer to that question:

• Ask a parent who was forced by the closing of schools, to teacher her children for the first time, 24/7/365 how difficult it is to teach even one child.

• Ask a student who thought that distance learning didn’t work, had unstable internet service and had difficulty getting their questions answered.

• Ask a politician, who heard the outcry  of people in their district/communities/states who are asking, “when will schools reopen?”

• Ask a teacher who is underpaid and unappreciated.

While a candidate, Ms. Harris proposed that there should be a federally subsidized $13,500 teacher raises. This would bring the average annual salary of teachers to $70,000 or more. For comparison, starting Facebook engineers earn over $100,000. On average, teachers starting salaries are under $40,000. Even Betsy Devos, the former Secretary of Education recognized that “great teachers” should earn a minimum salary of $250,000. 

A recent survey conducted in 2020 found that 67 percent of teachers “have or had a second job to make ends meet.” If teachers were properly paid, they wouldn’t have to run out of school in order to go to second jobs and wouldn’t be so exhausted. So, in addition to teaching, preparing effective lessons, grading papers, calling parents, tutoring, teachers go to second jobs to make ends meet.

With the cost of living rising and the price of raising a family going higher than ever before, fewer people are going into teaching. A 2019 report revealed that fewer college students are studying to become teachers and that because of “low salaries, difficult working conditions, teaching cannot compete with other “high status professions such as medicine or law.” Competitive teacher salaries would lower the attrition rate. Nearly one in ten teachers left the classroom last year. The exodus of educators takes a toll on students and learning. The Economic Policy Institute reported that teacher pay, adjusted for inflation, declined from1996 to 20120. Inexperienced teachers often fill teacher vacancies. With the possibility of state financial shortages, and teacher shortages the quality of student’s education is compromised. 

Almost 80% of all K-12 teachers are women. In the distant past, women only had the opportunity to work as teachers, nurses, librarians, or secretaries. That is no longer true. But the teaching profession is still treated by society as a place where women go to work to subsidize their husband’s salaries. It is still underpaid, and is unappreciated.

In honor of Memorial Day, I am reposting this to honor the heroes in our armed forces who have given so much and continue to give.  Thank you for making a difference.

Feel free to share this.

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience!

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, ‘ You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!   ‘How in the world did you know that?’ asked Plumb. ‘I packed your parachute,’ the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude.

The man pumped his hand and said, ‘I guess it worked!’  Plumb assured him, ‘It sure did. If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.’

Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, ‘I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said ‘Good morning, how are you?’ or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.’ Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn’t know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, ‘Who’s packing your parachute?’ Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory – he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason.  As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.

I am sending you this as my way of thanking you for your part in packing my parachute. And I hope you will send it on to those who have helped pack yours! Sometimes, we wonder why friends keep forwarding jokes to us without writing a word. Maybe this could explain it! When you are very busy, but still want to keep in touch, guess what you do – you forward jokes. And to let you know that you are still remembered, you are still important, you are still loved, you are still cared for and guess what you get? A forwarded joke.

So, next time when you get a joke, don’t think that you’ve been sent just another forwarded joke, but that you’ve been thought of today and your friend on the other end of your computer wanted to send you a smile, just helping you pack your parachute.

With hope in my heart and gratitude and love to all of you as well for packing my parachute.   I am lucky to have people to send my jokes to.  Thanks for raising me up!

To those in the front lines, whether in uniform or not -YOU ARE MY HEROES. THANK YOU FOR MAKING A DIFFERENCE!

https://schargel.com/2021/01/26/who-packed-your-parachute/

Education, like most of the institutions in the world, weren’t prepared to deal with the Covid-19 crisis. While some schools/districts had made plans to deal with a protracted crisis, most had not. 

• Front line educators hadn’t been given adequate training in delivering distance learning. 
• Parents hadn’t been given training in how to address their children’s learning needs for a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week. 
• School Administrators and Secretaries of Education had failed to develop contingency plans in the advent that schools would be closed for protracted period of time, like an entire school year. 
• Politicians had failed to insure that there was stable Internet in the nation so that children and parents could learn remotely.
• ‘Telephone trees” hadn’t been established to insure that clear lines of communication  existed between parents and schools.
• Many mobile electronic devices, if schools had ordered them, sat in warehouses and not in student’s hands. 

The lack of preparation led to calamitous events. Educators, parents and students attempted to adjust quickly… 

• Distance and hybrid learning plans were developed. 
• Mobile electronic sites using school buses were set up. 
• “Chromebooks” or Ipads were distributed. 
• Teachers attempted to rapidly learn how to deliver learning remotely. 
• Mothers were forced to  leave the workforce to care for their children as long as the schools remained closed to in person learning. 
• As a result of layoffs, the economy slowed. 
• The shortage of educators in classrooms was intensified as frontline educators (teachers and school administrators) was made worse by retirements, or educators who had to take care of their own children and were concerned for their own health about catching the virus.

Problems still exist today. Most students haven’t been vaccinated. 

How do schools:

• Measure the performance of students?
• Give credit for students, who, through no fault of their own, were unable to access the Internet?
• Prepare kindergarten and first-grade children who are entering school for the first time?
• Grant credit to high school seniors who were scheduled to graduate high school and go on to college?
• Familiarize students with teachers and school layouts when they enter middle and high school?
• Train new teachers who have just graduated schools of education.
• How do students with special needs make up the instruction they missed?

Schools need to develop contingency plans to address the next crisis. While these plans may not be perfect, they would be better than creating a vacuum.

Be prepared is the Boy Scouts of America motto. In doing research for revising my “Safe Schools” book, I found that the National Threat Assessment Agency of the U.S. Secret Service said, that the one thing that schools with mass school shootings had in common was that they weren’t prepared. 

It was 20 years ago that two students shot and killed thirteen other students, and wounded twenty-one in Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. Those of us who lived through it, will never forget the surprise and horror of the public. Nobody can count the number of school attacks that have been prevented or didn’t take place, but the pace of mass school shootings has spread to schools around the world and increased in frequency. 

Mass shooting are defined as one with four or more casualties. Through April 10, 2019 eighty incidents were recorded in the United States with at least 103 people killed and 284 wounded. In 2019 there were 340 mass shootings — an average of nearly one a day — with at least 373 deaths and 1,347 wounded. The Washington Post calculated earlier this month that in schools alone, in the years since Columbine, more than 223,000 children have been exposed to gun violence during classroom hours. 

Educators, students and parents can’t be blasé, with the attitude, “it can’t happen here”. School violence can and has taken place anywhere and everywhere. It has  occurred in rural, suburban, private and parochial schools as well on Native America reservations. And in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where twenty-six 6 and 7 year-olds and their instructors lives were taken. It has taken place in thirty-three states. No community is exempt!

There was a time when federal lawmakers were sickened by the violence and acted. In 1994, Congress passed a law banning assault weapons. But the statue expired 10 years later. Since then, the government has done almost nothing. Federal laws now largely protect the firearms industry from lawsuits. And through it all, political and religious leaders send “their thoughts and prayers” to the parents, wounded and survivors.

School violence can and has taken place anywhere. Educators, parents and law enforcement need to work to PREVENT their occurrence rather than REACT after school violence has taken place.

More about this in the coming weeks and months. Mark my website, www.schargel.com as one of your favorites.

I am reposting all of the four, previously published. articles at the request of those who didn’t read all of the articles. 

Feel free to share them with educators who you know.

Mass school shootings never stopped during the pandemic. Despite the fact that most schools were closed to in person learning, school shootings continued to take place. Education Week Tracker reported (March 2,2021) that there were 10 school shootings in 2020 resulting in:

• 12 people killed or injured in a school shooting
• 3 people killed
• 9 people injured
• 2 students or other children killed
• 1 school employee or other adult killed.

The fall in numbers is probably due to the shift to remote, distance learning for nearly all schools for part or all of 2020.  The pace of school shootings has escalated. Education Week reported (January 13, 2020) that in 2018 there were 24 school shootings and in 2019, there were 25. In 2020, the Covid-19 virus interrupted the trend line because remote learning shifted students from schools to homes. The lull in public school shootings during 2020 brought on by the pandemic response ended on April 12,2011 in Knoxville, Tennessee when a student was killed, and a School Resource Officer was shot.

Since the first mass shooting in Columbine, CO, there have been over 80 copycat attacks. 

While schools look for a profile of school shooters, the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Agency reports that there isn’t a profile. 

On March 28, 2020, the NY Times reported that more than 240,000 students have experienced gun violence in school since the 1999 Columbine massacre. A disproportionate number of these students were Black students, or those in socioeconomic underserved communities. Black boys and young men ages 15 t0 34 are more than 20 times more likely to die of gun homicide than their white counterparts.

In a new book, “Children Under Fire: An American Crisis  by John Woodrow Cox, 

On average, one child is shot every hour; over the past decade roughly 30,000 children and teenagers have been killed by gunfire – recently eclipsing cancer as their second leading cause of death.

Gun trauma has become part of the fabric of school society. While schools are seen as places of learning for many students, they are also seen as places of danger for others.

Preventing school violence has become a “big business”. According to the New York Times, (4/11/2021) it is “now a nearly $3 billion market and vendors are offering among other things,” bleed control bags”, Bullet-resistant white boards, pepper ball guns, and bulletproof classroom doors. This despite the recent National Threat Assessment Report that says that 91 percent of all school shootings are caused by students, former students or students from other schools – not intruders.

The latest National Threat Assessment Report said that Active Shooter Drills are training potential school shooters because 91 percent of all school shooters are either students in schools, former students, or students in other schools. So hard wiring schools against shooters who enter schools is incorrect. Selling “bullet-proof’ book bags simply builds anxiety in student and staff and fear in parent’s eyes.

Yet schools continue to “hardwire” their buildings against intruders and practice “active shooter drills”. The reality is that since most school shootings are caused by students and not intruders, we are giving potential shooters the hidings spots of their potential victims. Schools have a responsibility to educate young children, but they also have a responsibility to ensure that the children have a safe learning environment.  The problem of school violence is that it is multi-faceted and therefore the schools have a difficult task trying to deal with all of the causes. The overwhelming number of schools were not designed with safety in mind. There are too many entrances and exits and not enough personnel to many them. In addition, there are hidden entrances where people can come into the building through side entrances.Students have learned to live in a world of fear – fear in their neighborhoods, in their homes, and fear in what should be a place which should be the safest, schools. 

Where Do School Shooters Get Their Weapons?

Most guns used in school shootings have been obtained or purchased legally. . Sixty-two percent of the handgun shootings were acquired legally. Kip Kingel was given a 9mm Glock pistol by her father in order to help the youth develop an interest in something. Kinkel shot his parents and two schoolmates to death in May 1998. (Associated Press, January 18, 2000)

Most killers mostly use guns owned by a family member or friend or purchased it on their own. Even though most school aged children cannot purchase a gun, obtaining one is as easy as opening a parent’s dresser drawer or an unlocked gun safe.  The shooter in Parkland, Florida was a 19-year-old legally bought guns that left 17 dead. According to a survey of male 10^th and 11^th graders who carried a handgun outside of the home obtained it from a family member or friend.

The weapon of choice of school shooters is a handgun. Handguns are easily concealable and have increased firepower in terms of ammunition capacity and caliber. A handgun was used in 71% of the shootings. In 63% of the handgun shootings, the handguns were acquired legally. In 71% of the long-gun shootings, the guns were acquired legally. About 42% of U.S. adults say they live in households with a gun, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2017. According to the National Center for Education Statistic, 5% of students ages 12 to 18 in rural areas and 4.4% in the suburbs reported having access to loaded guns without adult permission, compared with 3.4% in urban areas.  The data shows 5.2% of white students in the age group reported having access, while 3.3% of black students and 2.8% of Hispanic students reported having access.

According to Nichole Hokley, a parent whose child died in the Sandy Hook school massacre. 

Approximately 7 children die every day due to gun related violence. School gun violence doesn’t discriminate by zip code or race or religion. While there is a greater gun violence in lower-income, minority, inner-city neighborhoods, There has been gun related violence in rural, suburban, white, higher-income neighborhoods as well. Almost 20,000 students are shot each year.

How do we stop violence from even starting?

In many school gun violence related incidents, we have missed signs and signals along the way. Most incidents are not spur of the minute but have been planned for at least 6 months. At least 1 person knows about it in advance. Most of those in the know are children, friends of the perpetrator. – not an adult. Parents are not informed nor in many case, nether are educators. We need to recognize the signs, we need to recognize them when they are in place and we need to act by, at the very least, having a safety assessment in place. 

What are the causes of school violence?

• America’s gun culture
• Availability of weapons (including in their home). An article in the Wall Street Journal (April 5, 2018) indicated that “about 42% of U.S. adults live in households with a gun.”
• Availability of semi-automatic weapons (using large capacity magazines)
• Lax gun laws in many states
• Legislatures and governors who respond to gun manufacturers and gun lobbies and not to educators, children and parents. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel: Republican Tennessee Governor, Bill Lee signed off on legislation the week before the violence in Knoxville that would make Tennessee the latest state to allow most adults 21 and older to carry handguns – openly or concealed- without first clearing a background check and training. Lee backed the legislation over objections from law enforcement groups who argued that the state’s existing permit system provided an important safeguard for knowing who should or shouldn’t be carrying a gun.

Things Beyond the Control of Schools 

• Schools not built or designed with safety in mind. In 1998, the average public school building in the United States was 42 years old. The mean age ranged from 46 years in the Northeast and Central states to 37 years in the Southeast. On average, schools located in the Northeast and Central regions of the country were older than those located in the Southeast and the West. Many of America’s schools may be at an age where frequent repairs are necessary. 
• There are too many entrances. Many entrances permit someone to enter the building and go to upper floors without being seen. Putting metal detectors in the building requires a huge investment in obtaining and manning them.
• School have been underfunded for a long time. As the pandemic has shown, they lack “basic necessities” like air conditioning for hot climates. Many still have “temporary buildings” that are over 20 years old. I have been in “portable school buildings” which lack restrooms for Kindergarten students who are force to run to the permanent building to use the facilities.  
• Classroom educator salaries are below those of comparison trained individuals in other fields resulting in shortages in science, math, special education and other field.
• Schools must accept everyone who applies.
• Overcome the community attitude “ It can’t happen here.” The names Hendersonville, NC, Newtown Conn., Oxnard, CA, Leland, NC, Weston, Fl, Littleton, CO,  were unfamiliar to most Americans prior to the school shootings in schools there. School violence has taken place in rural, urban, suburban, affluent, minority, private schools.

Things Schools Can Control

• In many gun violence related incidents, schools have missed signs and signals along the way. Most incidents are not spur of the minute but have been planned for at least 6 months. At least 1 person know about it in advance. 
• Schools should designate someone who has had training (possibly supplied by local or state police) to be able to look for and identify the signs of potential violence and possible perpetrators. 
• The emphasis should be on prevention, not reaction.
• They should have a  safety assessment in place. Schools and districts need to have a school-community emergency plan of action in place for students, staff and parents. It should be practiced and proactive. 
• There needs to be a Threat Assessment Team in every school composed of multi-disciplinary educators, counselors, parents and law makers.
• Schools need to create a positive school culture which is open to students who wish to report a possible incident.
• Districts need to designate, in each school, a student-friendly person who, students trust, to serve as a “third-ear.”
• Schools need to proactively develop open lines of communication via social media, newsletters and emails with parents and they should be used regularly.
• Lawmakers must be accountable to the public for the lack of health and safety regulation of the firearms industry. Today, the gun industry is virtually free of any government oversight regarding the design, manufacture and distribution of firearms. This has resulted in the ready availability of assault weapons, which are ultra-concealable, high capacity, high caliber, and small enough to be concealed and fired by a six-year old.

School violence can be prevented. If we can prevent heart attacks, choking, and drownings, then we can prevent school violence.

If we proactively recognize the signs, take positive steps, and involve all those who may be affected. 

There are things that schools can control and things that they cannot regarding school violence.

Things Beyond the Control of Schools 

• Schools not built or designed with safety in mind. In 1998, the average public school building in the United States was 42 years old. The mean age ranged from 46 years in the Northeast and Central states to 37 years in the Southeast. On average, schools located in the Northeast and Central regions of the country were older than those located in the Southeast and the West. Many of America’s schools may be at an age where frequent repairs are necessary. 
• There are too many entrances. Many entrances permit someone to enter the building and go to upper floors without being seen. Putting metal detectors in the building requires a huge investment in obtaining and manning them.
• School have been underfunded for a long time. As the pandemic has shown, they lack “basic necessities” like air conditioning for hot climates. Many still have “temporary buildings” that are over 20 years old. I have been in “portable school buildings” which lack restrooms for Kindergarten students who are force to run to the permanent building to use the facilities.  
• Classroom educator salaries are below those of comparison trained individuals in other fields resulting in shortages in science, math, special education and other field.
• Schools must accept everyone who applies.
• Overcome the community attitude “ It can’t happen here.” The names Hendersonville, NC, Newtown Conn., Oxnard, CA, Leland, NC, Weston, Fl, Littleton, CO,  were unfamiliar to most Americans prior to the school shootings in schools there. School violence has taken place in rural, urban, suburban, affluent, minority, private schools.

Things Schools Can Control

• In many gun violence related incidents, schools have missed signs and signals along the way. Most incidents are not spur of the minute but have been planned for at least 6 months. At least 1 person know about it in advance. 
• Schools should designate someone who has had training (possibly supplied by local or state police) to be able to look for and identify the signs of potential violence and possible perpetrators. 
• The emphasis should be on prevention, not reaction.
• They should have a  safety assessment in place. Schools and districts need to have a school-community emergency plan of action in place for students, staff and parents. It should be practiced and proactive. 
• There needs to be a Threat Assessment Team in every school composed of multi-disciplinary educators, counselors, parents and law makers.
• Schools need to create a positive school culture which is open to students who wish to report a possible incident.
• Districts need to designate, in each school, a student-friendly person who, students trust, to serve as a “third-ear.”
• Schools need to proactively develop open lines of communication via social media, newsletters and emails with parents and they should be used regularly.
• Lawmakers must be accountable to the public for the lack of health and safety regulation of the firearms industry. Today, the gun industry is virtually free of any government oversight regarding the design, manufacture and distribution of firearms. This has resulted in the ready availability of assault weapons, which are ultra-concealable, high capacity, high caliber, and small enough to be concealed and fired by a six-year old.

School violence can be prevented. If we proactively recognize the signs, take positive steps, and involve all those who may be affected. 

How do we stop violence from even starting?

In many school gun violence related incidents, we have missed signs and signals along the way. Most incidents are not spur of the minute but have been planned for at least 6 months. At least 1 person knows about it in advance. Most of those in the know are children, friends of the perpetrator. – not an adult. Parents are not informed nor in many case, nether are educators. We need to recognize the signs, we need to recognize them when they are in place and we need to act by, at the very least, having a safety assessment in place. 

What are the causes of school violence?

• America’s gun culture
• Availability of weapons (including in their home). An article in the Wall Street Journal (April 5, 2018) indicated that “about 42% of U.S. adults live in households with a gun.”
• Availability of semi-automatic weapons (using large capacity magazines)
• Lax gun laws in many states
• Legislatures and governors who respond to gun manufacturers and gun lobbies and not to educators, children and parents. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel: Republican Tennessee Governor, Bill Lee signed off on legislation the week before the violence in Knoxville that would make Tennessee the latest state to allow most adults 21 and older to carry handguns – openly or concealed- without first clearing a background check and training. Lee backed the legislation over objections from law enforcement groups who argued that the state’s existing permit system provided an important safeguard for knowing who should or shouldn’t be carrying a gun.

If we can prevent heart attacks, choking, and drownings, then we can prevent school violence.

PART #2

Most guns used in school shootings have been obtained or purchased legally. . Sixty-two percent of the handgun shootings were acquired legally. Kip Kingel was given a 9mm Glock pistol by her father in order to help the youth develop an interest in something. Kinkel shot his parents and two schoolmates to death in May 1998. (Associated Press, January 18, 2000)

Most killers mostly use guns owned by a family member or friend or purchased it on their own. Even though most school aged children cannot purchase a gun, obtaining one is as easy as opening a parent’s dresser drawer or an unlocked gun safe.  The shooter in Parkland, Florida was a 19-year-old legally bought guns that left 17 dead. According to a survey of male 10^th and 11^th graders who carried a handgun outside of the home obtained it from a family member or friend.

The weapon of choice of school shooters is a handgun. Handguns are easily concealable and have increased firepower in terms of ammunition capacity and caliber. A handgun was used in 71% of the shootings. In 63% of the handgun shootings, the handguns were acquired legally. In 71% of the long-gun shootings, the guns were acquired legally. About 42% of U.S. adults say they live in households with a gun, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2017. According to the National Center for Education Statistic, 5% of students ages 12 to 18 in rural areas and 4.4% in the suburbs reported having access to loaded guns without adult permission, compared with 3.4% in urban areas.  The data shows 5.2% of white students in the age group reported having access, while 3.3% of black students and 2.8% of Hispanic students reported having access.

ccording to Nichole Hokley, a parent whose child died in the Sandy Hook school massacre.

Approximately 7 children die every day due to gun related violence. School gun violence doesn’t discriminate by zip code or race or religion. While there is a greater gun violence in lower-income, minority, inner-city neighborhoods, There has been gun related violence in rural, suburban, white, higher-income neighborhoods as well. Almost 20,000 students are shot each year.