Rochelle Township High School (RTHS) shows a far better way to respond to school violence than a disruptive demonstration organized by a Leftist political organization–a way that unifies the school community rather than divides and a way that doesn’t violate school board policies regarding student conduct.

Superintendent Jason Harper sent this message to parents:

Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and families of recent school shootings; however, we believe a student walk out creates both a substantial disruption to the learning environment and creates a safety and security risk for students. RTHS will stay safe and focused on learning by remaining in school. We will not participate in the national walk out protests. Students and teachers who participate in such a walk out will receive appropriate consequences for the situation.

At the same time, the RTHS administration wants students to know their voices are heard and should feel empowered to help create meaningful change. The RTHS administration has provided students with the opportunity to plan an entire week of activities as part of the “Week of Us” initiative led by students…. RTHS has dedicated an entire week to honoring lives lost due to violence and to bettering our own school climate.

Contrast Superintendent Harper’s response to the problematic response of St. Charles East High School principal Charles A. Kyle and St. Charles North High School principal Audra Christenson (CUSD 303) who sent a letter to parents informing them that students may participate. The notice also informs parents of the hoops the administration is jumping through to accommodate this violation of school board policy:

In an effort to ensure that we are focusing our efforts on the safety of our students who are on campus, we have decided to close our campus to visitors on March 14. This includes students from other schools, parents, former staff members, and community members. At 10:00 a.m. on March 14, students who choose to walk out of school will be directed to designated areas on campus where school and district administrators will provide supervision. In addition, we have requested extra support from the St. Charles Police Department at our high schools…. Students who participate in the walkout and return to class at the conclusion of the time allotted will not be marked absent. Likewise, students who remain on campus and maintain appropriate conduct will not receive disciplinary consequences.

That’s a curious decision in light of the section on “Prohibited Student Conduct” in their school board policy manual which prohibits the following:

Engaging in any activity, on or off campus, that interferes with, disrupts, or adversely affects the school environment, school operations, or an educational function. (emphasis added)

The letter to parents also includes this patently false statement:

[O]ur District policies, rules, and student code of conduct will remain in place.

Naperville North High School is outdoing most schools. Students there are extending their walkout to 90 minutes with students speechifying on gun violence statistics, community action, and voter information.

Barrington, York, Deerfield, and Highland Park High Schools are allowing students to leave class for Wednesday’s political protest despite all four schools having policy with the exact prohibition of activity that interferes with or  disrupts the school environment or school operations.

Collinsville Middle and High Schools are allowing students to disrupt instructional time despite this board policy:

A student is subject to disciplinary action for engaging in prohibited student conduct… whenever the student’s conduct is reasonably related to school or school activities… [o]n, or within sight of, school grounds before, during, or after school hours or at any time… if the conduct interferes with, disrupts, or adversely affects the school environment, school operations, or an educational function.

You get the point. Many middle and high school administrators are allowing students to participate in a leftist political demonstration that clearly violates school board policies.

Some will argue that the National School Walkout is trivial and, therefore, not worth opposing. And that’s how the Left wins again. The Left understands that incrementalism works. They take one baby-step at a time and when they encounter opposition, they simply ridicule their opponents into submission. Then next week, or next month, or next year, they take more baby-steps. Gradually, incrementally, they effect the radical changes in our schools and in our culture that they have for decades sought.

So, call your children’s middle and high schools to ask if they will be allowing students to violate school conduct policies. If they are, keep your kids home. And if you live in the Rochelle Township High School community, thank Superintendent Harper.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/A-Better-Way-to-Respond-to-School-Violence-1.mp3

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-and, please-

In early November 2010, suburban St. Charles North High School became embroiled in a controversy during yet another public school event designed to affirm homosexuality.

In response to “Ally Week,” a pro-homosexual week sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), three students wore t-shirts that said “Straight Pride” on the front and had a verse from Leviticus on the back that read, “If a man lay with a male as those who lay with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination and shall surely be put to death.”

Administrators asked the students to cross out parts of the verse, but the next day when two students wore shirts that simply read “Straight Pride” with no Bible verse, administrators asked them to cover their shirts with sweatshirts because they deemed the phrase disruptive. Space does not permit a discussion of First Amendment speech rights, diversity, tolerance, fairness, or disruptiveness, all of which deserve a full discussion.

Instead, I want to respond to an editorial by homosexuality-affirming demagogue, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, who wrote the following:

“Gay Pride” is an antidote to gay shame – the sense of alienation and otherness in adolescence that prompted writer Dan Savage to start the It Gets Better project to reduce the incidence of suicide among gay teens; kids who kill themselves in part because they’re treated unmercifully by the sorts of peers who would wear shirts to school consigning them to being murdered at the command of an angry God.

…the expression “Straight Pride” can only be read as a gratuitous and contemptuous response to the suggestion that gay people not be marginalized.

…Most of us long ago got our minds around the idea that “Black Power,” a slogan calling for dignity and opportunity for historically oppressed African Americans, is not the bland mirror image of “White Power,” a slogan employed by bigots clinging fearfully and often violently to the vestiges of Caucasian prerogative.

School administrators have not just the right but also the obligation to quell such hate speech within their walls.

Before responding to Zorn’s comments, I want to say that the verse from Leviticus was unnecessarily provocative. For a proper understanding, this verse requires context and theological exposition–two things in which liberal journalists seem little interested even as they pontificate on things theological.

Also, I hope readers will research the man to whom Zorn refers: Dan Savage is a homosexual writer and speaker who uses sophomoric, hateful, and obscene rhetoric to promote sexual perversion and denigrate Christians.

Zorn is wrong in asserting that “Straight Pride” can “only be read as a gratuitous and contemptuous response to the suggestion that gay people not be marginalized.”

Although “gay pride” may signify a proclamation against shame, it also implies that conservative views are wrong, hateful, and must be silenced. Zorn implicitly affirms this when he compares those who hold conservative moral beliefs about homosexuality to hateful, fearful, violent, bigoted oppressors. That’s a lot to impute to teens who wear “Straight Pride” t-shirts. And it’s a message they don’t need to hear from Mr. Zorn, because they likely hear it repeatedly at school.

“Straight pride” is not contemptuous of the message that homosexuals should not be marginalized. “Straight pride” rebels against the idea that only pro-homosexual messages have a right to be spoken in public schools. “Straight pride” conveys the idea that conservative moral beliefs are right, true, and entitled to a place in public discourse, including schools.

Adolescents don’t take kindly to authoritarianism or censorship, which is what many conservative teens rightly perceive in the endless implicit and explicit criticism of traditional moral beliefs in public schools. Again and again, conservative kids hear that their moral beliefs about behavior constitute hatred of persons and must be silenced. The phrase “Straight pride” is not a contemptuous message of hatred for persons who identify as homosexual; nor is it a threat. It is an act of non-conformity that conveys the message that conservative students have as much a right to express their moral beliefs as liberal students and teachers have to express theirs.

Teens can see what many taxpayers don’t want to see: activist ideologues inside and outside public schools are imposing their unproven political, moral, and philosophical beliefs on students.

And some teens have had enough.

If taxpayers would oppose this sustained and systemic propaganda, teens wouldn’t feel the need to.

Those who truly love children–parents, grandparents, public school teachers and administrators, church leaders, and legislators–should no longer tolerate government employees preaching homosexuality-affirming dogma in schools that their taxes subsidize.

In schools that purport to care about diversity, the free exchange of ideas, and critical thinking, students are entitled to study competing ideas about, for example, whether homosexuality is analogous to race; whether disapproval of homosexual acts constitutes hatred of persons; whether homosexuality is biologically determined; whether homosexuality is fixed; whether interracial marriage is analogous to homosexual marriage; and whether children have an intrinsic right to a mother and a father.

Don’t avoid discussions about homosexuality. Talk to your neighbors, friends, teachers, and church leaders. Write letters to your local press and elected legislators. Ask your pastors and priests to speak up in the communities in which they live. Ask them to teach adults and teens in your church how to think through the secular arguments used to normalize homosexuality. Don’t flee from persecution. Persevere for the sake of our children, our schools, our freedom, and truth.

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