These statistics may be disturbing for many, for that I apologize in advance. I update them as often as I have to and consult them regularly to remind myself of why community-based education initiatives are so important. If you feel any of this is in error, please let me know.

I can't tell if all the grief I feel over these matters is simply because I put all these statistics in one place...or if I'm really entitled to feel the way I do. Therefore, I can't tell if I've only convinced myself there's a problem or if there really is one.

I leave it to you to decide for yourself.

Pateticus
News Clippings Courtesy of ASFAR...

Pennsylvania:

At approximately 9:40 p.m. on Friday, April 24, 1998, Andrew Jerome Wurst, age 14, shot and killed science teacher John J. Gillette, at an eighth grade school dance held at Nick’s Place, a banquet hall near the Parker Middle School just north of Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Armed with his father’s .25 caliber semiautomatic pistol, Andrew also wounded another teacher and two classmates. Adjudicated as an adult, Andrew eventually accepted a plea on third-degree murder. Judge Michael M. Palmisano sentenced Andrew to serve 30 to 60 years in prison. He will not be eligible for parole until age 45.

Arkansas:

On March 24, 1998, in the third and deadliest in a series of recent school shootings in a Southern community, Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, both students at Westside Middle School in Northeast Arkansas, opened fire on 96 of their classmates and teachers. As a result, four students and a teacher died and 10 others were wounded.

Kentucky:

At 7:42 a.m. on December 1, 1997, Michael Carneal opened fire with a .22 caliber pistol on a prayer group gathered in the lobby of Heath High School, just outside of Paducah, Kentucky. The 14-year-old freshman killed three students and wounded five others, two seriously. After firing eight shots, Carneal put his pistol on the floor and surrendered to school principal, Bill Bond. The son of a respected attorney and a homemaker and brother of one of the school’s valedictorians, Michael Carneal shattered the peace and security of the tightly knit rural community of Heath, Kentucky, and shocked the nation with a brutal instance of school violence.
Illinois:

Joseph White shot and killed Delondyn Lawson at Tilden High School in the last fatal Chicago school shooting nearly a decade ago. This event was portrayed by extensive news coverage as random and senseless and by a jury trial as a first degree homicide that was inexcusable as self-defense. However, this shooting was not random, and while it could not be justified as self-defense, it evolved out of a gang-related dispute with socially structured roots. This case study shows with an analysis of news media reports, census statistics and trial transcripts, and through personal interviews with community and school participants, lawyers, news reporters and public officials, how the Tilden school shooting was connected to major historical changes in the economic and racial context that led to entrenched gang conflict in the South Side community where it occurred.

New York:

Thomas Jefferson High School, in East New York, was the scene of two episodes of school violence during the 1991-1992 school year. On November 25, 1991, Jason Bentley shot a teacher, Robert Anderson, and shot and killed a fellow student, Daryl Sharpe. On February 26, 1992, Khalil Sumpter shot and killed Tyrone Sinkler and Ian Moore. Although the first shooting had been a shock to the school, the neighborhood, and the city, the second shooting was something more than that. Following on the heels of the first episode and occurring on a day when the mayor was scheduled to speak at the school, the incident took on enormous weight. In brief, the intrusion of violence into the school was read as the breaching of one of the last sanctuaries in a city wracked by violence. Whoever was to blame and many candidates were proposed it was surely a terrible and intolerable state of affairs that had come to pass.
Today's Public Schools are responding to these issues by enacting Zero Tolerance Policies and trying our children as adults. Making our children pay for grown-up neglect through abuse, degredation and humiliation:
School forces Pregnancy & STD Tests:

NEW YORK -- School administrators in Washington Heights forced several eighth-graders to be tested for pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases after they attended a "hooky party" last spring, the New York Civil Liberties Union charged in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday...

Florida Teen Shut Down by Homeowner's Association:

"He began at 15 by mowing a few lawns for neighbors. Within two years, he landscaped entire gardens from scratch, built waterfalls and ponds and, until recently, raked in around $2,500 a month."

"But in recent months, board members of The Colony, west of Boynton Beach, have been trying to clamp down on their community's youngest entrepreneur, 16-year-old Bishy Tannous, saying his landscaping business violates association rules."

Student Uprise at Orotina:

OROTINA, Costa Rica, May 25 -- A torrent of teenage rage, hard and fast as the tropical rain on this Pacific coast, washed away the Academy at Dundee Ranch this weekend.

Dundee Ranch, the latest foreign outpost in a far-flung affiliation of behavior modification programs that promises to convert troubled American teenagers into straight arrows, lasted 19 months before the students rose up in revolt and overthrew their masters.

Wwasps, based in St. George, Utah, bills itself as the fastest-growing enterprise aimed at defiant and delinquent children. Some 2,200 children in 11 affiliated programs in the United States and abroad are charged between $30,000 to $50,000 in tuition and fees, generating yearly revenues of $60 million or more.

Dundee Ranch's enrollment increased 30 percent over the past year. According to students, as many as 15 children slept in a single room.

Students to recieve $165 fine for being tardy

That's the tardiness policy being implemented at Whittier High School, where students who arrive on campus after the 8 a.m. bell more than twice without being accompanied by a parent will now receive $165 tickets from the Whittier Police Department.

Girl expelled over Advil

A student expelled from Parkway High for a year for having Advil, an over-the-counter pain reliever, will not be allowed to return to the school.

Autistic boy's death at church ruled homicide

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (CNN) -- An 8-year-old autistic boy dies at a prayer service where church members tried to heal him of "evil spirits".

Kids tied up, stripped at state training schools

JACKSON - Adolescents at two Mississippi training schools have been hogtied, shackled to poles, ordered to exercise at odd hours and forced to eat their own vomit when they get sick from the exertion...
But let us not forget that this is a time of war...
598 Palestinian children younger than 17 were killed in the first two days of Operation Days of Penitence. 42 of them were 10 years old, 20 were seven and eight were two years old when they died.

The youngest victims are 13 newborn infants who died at checkpoints during birth.

According to data of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 3,409 schoolchildren have been wounded in the intifada, some of them crippled for life.
From Child Development Expert, Michael Gurian

According to the US Department of Mental Health:

Seven out of ten children between the ages of 9 and 13 don't believe their parents really love them
No Child Left Behind short-changed our school system by $25billion....

In May of 2005, the Drug Sense Drug-War Clock reports that the nation spent $25billion on the drug war. At the expense and harrassment of more than 300,000 lives, while more than 5,000 people remain in prison.

The average street-level drug dealer makes $1500 a week in under-the-table cash.

One child gets shot in their own home every 15 minutes.

1 out of 4 people with HIV don't know they have it.
1 out of 7 people with HIV know and don't tell their partners.
Are you tired yet?


The systems that we set up to run this country are literally, financially, spiritually, physically and psychologically killing off our own children.

I don't believe this out of any kind of expertise. All I do is read the papers. I'm a nobody, I've been a working class asshole all my life, I feel I've been to hell and back with some of the bullshit I've seen.

And I'm only 33 years old.

I'm doing this because I'm tired of seeing our children pay for our stupidity.

Community funded, group-parenting initiatives allow parents and caregivers to pool their resources to form schools based on the shared beliefs and values of the community.

Instead of having to take part in a system and change it from the inside, it is possible to create an alternative to the system so that nobody has to change and nobody has to fight.

May 22, 2003: eighth-grader James Williams of Vancouver, Washington, became the second homeschooler in a row to place first in the National Geography Bee. James answered the question, "Goa, a state in southwestern India, was a possession of what country until 1961?" James' correct answer, "Portugal," netted him a $25,000 scholarship and a lifetime subscription to National Geographic magazine.

May 29, 2003: homeschooled eighth-grader Evelyn Blacklock from Tuxedo Park, New York, placed second in the National Spelling Bee. The word that finally tripped her up? "Gnathonic," which means sycophantic or fawning. In spite of missing out on first place, Evelyn still took home a $6,000 cash prize.

Homeschoolers made up 12 percent of the 251 spelling bee finalists and 5 percent of the 55 geography bee finalists. Three of the past seven spelling bee winners have been homeschooled. Last year's homeschooled winner of the geography bee was 10 years old, the youngest in that event's history.