When did "a right to know" turn into "a right to a personal phone call explicitly outlining all relevant information?"
Ask Durham school officials. Prompted by the recent incidents in which students brought firearms onto school grounds, educators and principals are now considering ways to notify parents whenever such incidents occur.
When students are involved in criminal activity, it is often difficult to decide what information to release and how to make it available to the public. These decisions become much more complex because some of the offenders are so young.
The people most qualified to answer these questions, however, are these principals and educators-they should be the ones who use their discretion to decide how much information the public needs to know.
Once they have made the decision to make such information public, the most effective way to inform parents is through the local newspaper, instead of setting up complicated automatic phone systems or phone chains to leave recorded messages with parents as some have suggested.
If parents are concerned about weapons infractions in schools, they can take a few minutes to scan the headlines to find out the information.
Spending vital resources on these pursuits when schools are already having difficulty getting ahold of basic educational materials seems futile. The resources could be spent more effectively on preventative measures. School officials need to determine why children are bringing weapons to school and how they can best discourage this behavior.
It wouldn't be unreasonable to ask officials to compile and distribute statistics on severe rule violations, assuming most schools don't already have such a mechanism. A yearly report specifically detailing the number of fights, weapons infractions and other offenses is far more useful to parents than a system where they are contacted individually about each major incident.
Knowing how many fights occur each year is far more useful than being immediately privy to all of the gossip about which kid did what in school today. The overall statistics give a much more accurate description of the real threat posed to students. Either mailing this report or sending it home with students would convey far more information to parents and doesn't require a large allocation of resources or imagination.
In the meantime, if the infraction is serious enough to warrant parental notification, it will inevitably be found in the local newspaper.
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