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OPINIONS
March 14, 2019 |
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 Wingate Lassiter |
The right way to school
safety doesn't include arming teachers
Johnston County Public Schools are getting safer. Entry into buildings on just about every campus is now restricted by electronic devices, and by this summer every high school and middle school in the county will be staffed full-time by SROs, the acronym for "School Resource Officers" employed through municipal police departments and the Sheriff's Department.
The addition of SROs to seven middle schools that presently don't have them is being made possible by a state grant matched two-for-one by county funds. We can thank the N.C. General Assembly for that.
Meanwhile, there are state legislators who've advocated arming school teachers, and even paying them extra if they complete training in the use of firearms.
Survey after survey has shown a vast majority of North Carolina's teachers don't want that. "It's a disaster waiting to happen," declared one teachers' advocate, pointing out the obvious danger of having a loaded weapon in every classroom.
Let the professional law-enforcement community handle school safety. Teachers, meanwhile, need to be free of those responsibilities so they can concentrate on their most important task.
Instead of paying them more for weapons training, pay them more for elevating their preparedness to teach by pursuing goals like national certification and master's degrees.
A pet peeve regarding March
Madness
OK. Maybe this isn't a "local" issue. But I'm gonna say it anyway 'cause many of you are following the ACC basketball tournament as I am:
The greed of the TV sports networks has taken a bit of the fun out of watching college basketball by squeezing in far more commercials during games than are necessary to pay the bill for giving us free broadcasts.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association --- the NCAA --- could control the commercial breaks in a more reasonable manner if it chose to do so. Obviously, the NCAA and the big-time schools that profit from the telecasts aren't willing to put fans and players above their lucrative TV payouts.
I understand the rationale for granting "TV timeouts" after every four minutes of play. But when a coach calls a timeout in between those promised commercial breaks, why can't those be counted as the guaranteed breaks in the action?
It has gotten so ridiculous that the networks hardly ever complete the telecast of a game within the two hours they allot for each contest. Thank goodness for the hand-held remote that enables us to switch to another game, or another program, to avoid watching the same old commercials over and over again.
Although, I'll admit, the Geico commercials are still worth watching repeatedly, like a vintage classic movie.
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