Today's Joplin Globe featured two articles that left me with questions:
One featured the news (broken on the local TV stations last night) that the Carterville Police Department is having to eliminate two full-time officers. The TV reports and the Globe article made it appear that the city would be left wide open for all kinds of murderers, rapists, and thieves.
Then I noticed in the Globe that the cuts would reduce Carterville's police force to five full-time officers. Was there really a need for seven full-time officers for a city of 2,000? While I was a firm believer in the concept of the COPS program when it started in the 1990s, it did have the effect of adding extra officers in some communities that might not have needed them. Now that the federal funding for the program has been reduced, some cities may return to a manpower total that is less, but more than adequate for their needs.
The effect of the COPS program locally would make an excellent investigative piece for the Globe, or some other enterprising news outlet.
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The other story that had me asking questions was the story on student drug testing. I have made no secret that I am not a supporter of this and consider it to be an invasion of students' privacy, but the reporting in today's paper left some questions unanswered, such as:
-How many students are not participating in activities to avoid drug tests? These would appear to be students who will not be reached by these programs, and be in danger of dropping out or making possible life-threatening decisions.
-Is there any student opposition, organized or not, to these programs?
-Were any other options considered before schools opted for drug testing, or is this simply a matter of one school did it, so why don't we until everyone was on the bandwagon?
-What is the exact cost of these drug-testing programs? And please, don't give me that stock answer of "If one life is saved, then it is worth the cost." If that were the case, we would already have seatbelts on school buses.
Drug testing of students who participate in extracurricular activities, as I have noted several times on this blog, runs the risk of keeping the very students from getting involved who need these types of positive activities the most.
Parents and educators have understandably been frustrated by the continuing use of drugs, but these programs are too important to let them continue to expand by just asking softball questions and not asking for hard evidence. As of yet, there is no evidence that the programs work. Yes, we have only a small number of kids who are testing positive for drugs on these tests, but how many others are we leaving behind because we can't offer them the glimmer of hope that extracurricular activities has offered students for generations?
2 comments:
Administrators like these policies because it greatly reduces the level of proof required to discipline a student. Ditto on the "no student left behind" testing policies. By substituting a policy filter for human judgement and effort, the students and teachers all get short changed...but the administrators will have more time to discuss the problem at their pebble beach seminar.
I just did the math. Five full-time officers at forty hours a week equals 200 police hours available. 24 hours in a day times 7 days a week equals 168 hours. That's 32 hours overlap. Perhaps not an ideal situation, but certainly it would seem workable for a town the size of Carterville.
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