Friday, March 7, 2014

Educators Lack Common Sense ...

A 14-year old student was in the swimming pool when the fire alarm sounded.  Minnesota teachers immediately evacuated all students from the building, including the young lady who was wearing only a soaking wet bathing suit and a skimpy towel.  She asked to obtain her clothing from her locker, and that was refused.  She asked to be able to sit inside a teacher’s car, and that was refused.  Educators forced this young lady to stand outside in 5-degree below zero weather, resulting in frostbite to her feet and toes.

Was the school principal or teacher arrested for child endangerment?  No.  Did the school principal or teacher apologize?  No.  The School Board only agreed to review evacuation policy with the local fire marshal.

Do you feel good about entrusting your children to public school teachers?


Source: Daily Caller

32 comments:

Ed Bonderenka said...

Oh to be a lawyer in that town.
Our local schools were decent when my kids went.
We were involved, also.
But having seen the current posters in the halls while voting, I would not put my kids in that environment.

Always On Watch said...

"Educators" have been trained along these lines since at least the early 1970s. What I describe in that blog post did not happen at a Leftist university -- although professors did run the gamut all along the political spectrum (with most professors at the time right-leaning).

So, perhaps the teacher described in this blog post here a Z's site never memorized information about freezing temperatures.

Also, now that "educators" almost always have personal-liability insurance, "educators" tend to be more careless than in times past (when only PE teachers typically had insurance coverage). Most insurance coverage comes via union membership -- at least, here in Virginia.

Always On Watch said...

There will be no apology for this reason: in a civil suit, such an apology would be presented by the plaintiff's attorney as an admission of guilt. I'm sure that the principal and the teacher have been specifically forbidden to issue an apology.

The School Board only agreed to review evacuation policy -- another precaution so that a civil suit goes nowhere.

Always On Watch said...

It could be that allowing the student to sit inside a teacher's car would transfer liability away from the school's insurance policy and transfer the liability specifically to the teacher and the teacher's automobile policy.

PS: Yes, I took a course in school law -- specific to Virginia, of course.

Sam Huntington said...

Given the information you provided about lawsuit avoidance ... then it would appear that someone should have a case against the teacher(s) and school administrators for child endangerment ... no?

Always On Watch said...

Sam,
Yes, I think that there should be a case for child endangerment. Here is the Minnesota statute. However, a defense attorney would likely bring up the matter of intent.

Of course, it is reasonable for us to think that any adult should be able to recognize that any "educator" who doesn't understand the correlation between weather temperatures and exposure time as related to the risk of frostbite has to be dumber than a rock to have subjected this student to the risk.

Another matter which would be considered: if the fire alarm sounded and the teacher didn't know that the drill was not a real fire, the teacher might have a defense. It is, of course, the principal's responsibility to inform teachers of scheduled fire drills; if not notified otherwise, teachers are required to assume that the fire alarm sounded because there really is a fire in progress.

I suspect that the matter will be settled out of court -- and that the amount of settlement is ordered by the court not to be revealed.

Thersites said...

Rule following = REWARD
Common Sense = PUNISH

You really expect rule followers like school administrators to display common sense?

sue hanes said...

Z - There is too much sticking to the rules in school thses days. The poor girl should have been given consideration in her circumstances - that she had a bathing suit on in such cold weather.

JonBerg said...

"You really expect rule followers like school administrators to display common sense?"

NO!

So called, "Public Education" has degenerated into one of the main causes/symptoms of our overall demise.

Anonymous said...

From Z of GEEEZ:

AOW, thanks for that information ....and imagine thinking a teacher should HAVE to learn/memorize that STANDING IN THE COLD NEARLY NAKED IS GOING TO HURT YOU? :-)
You are so wise for taking that class on schools/law. Good one.

I'll bet a case does go forward.

Anonymous said...

For those feckless, refusing-to-see-what's-in-front-of-their-noses conservative pundits, pols, and bloggers, HERE YA GO:

.I don't see them now, but a lib or two were here in comments (Where'd they do?) telling us that Conservatives love Putin....gee, isn't it odd that nobody you or I know does? :-) Thanks for confirming that in writing!
Come by again

REMINDER: Please, let's see links of conservatives CHEERING ON RUSSIA in CRIMEA OR UKRAINE.. thanks

"Who has said anything like THAT?" They protest. "I don't know ANY conservative who's praised and admired Putin!" They lie.


LIAR, LIAR, Pant and Underpants on FIRE!

~Dr.Who~ said...

Yes, Geeeez, The First Moocher is going to China on vacation!
Fresh off the first family’s sixth annual winter vacation to the Hawaiian island of Oahu – billed to American taxpayers at a cost of $4 million – Michelle Obama and the first daughters Malia and Sasha will now jet off to China for over a week of much-needed sightseeing.

President Barack Obama won’t be making the trip.

But don’t worry, America: The first lady’s mother, Marian Robinson, will be tagging along on the federal dime.

The theme of the March 19-26 trip will be education, reports the Chicago Tribune. The first lady and her entourage will spend several days in Beijing before venturing to the cities of Xian and Chengdu.

Naturally, the Obama family and its accompanying retinue will take in several cultural and historical sites. They will also stop by high schools in both Beijing and Chengdu.

The first lady will meet with Peng Liyuan, the second and current wife of Xi Jinping, the president of China and the general secretary of the country’s Communist Party.

Liyuan is also an allegedly popular folk singer in China. Here she is, according to YouTube, singing “To See Liberation for All Oppressed People.”

As the Daily Mail observes, the Obamas have spent a tremendous amount of taxpayer money globetrotting in luxury all over the world.

Always On Watch said...

Z,
If the parents can find an attorney to take the case, the case will go forward.

I don't know what Minnesota's track record is for such law suits. A law suit has to be "worth the attorney's time" for the case to be taken on.

Bob said...

"4) neglect as defined in paragraph (f), clause (2), that substantially endangers the child's physical or mental health,"

Thanks for the link, AOW. It surely seems to me that even if there were a fire, the faculty and staff have a responsibility to make sure the children are safe. Period. If that means to keep a little girl warm who was just now swimming, it means keeping that child warm. There is NO excuse for the faculty/staff performing in a manner that endangered a child's life during a DRILL.

Always On Watch said...

Bob,
What you said makes sense. However, if no criminal charges are filed, that lack of filing will make it more difficult for the plaintiff to win a civil suit.

I must wonder why no criminal charges have been filed. Is it too soon? Some other reason?

Always On Watch said...

From this source:

Fourteen-year-old Kayona Hagen-Tietz reports that she now has frostbite. Her sacrifice enabled Como Park High School to conduct an unplanned fire drill without violating a school fraternization rule.

[...]

Gopher State schools generally do not conduct fire drills during the winter months. WCCO reports that smoke from a “science experiment” set off the alarm.

In the meantime, teachers feared to violate openly a school policy that prohibits students from sitting in a faculty member’s car.

Hagen-Tietz fellow students, however, demonstrated a grasp of civilized behavior. Students huddled around her and and some frigid classmates, giving her a sweatshirt to put around her feet. A teacher coughed up a jacket.

After Hagen-Tietz had suffered for ten minutes in sub-zero weather, a teacher finally received administrative permission to let her sit inside her car until students were allowed back inside....


More information at the above link.

Ducky's here said...

Rather stupid behavior by the administrators but still anecdotal.

Bob said...

@Ducky
"Rather stupid behavior by the administrators but still anecdotal."

Doesn't pretty much all knowledge start out being an anecdote? I may be wrong, but we have to start out somewhere. Checking the source, and adding some decent research into causal issues seems to me to be the normal route to turning anecdotes into information.

Trekkie4Ever said...

I would definitely be suing. If it was just a fire drill, they should have allowed her to get her clothes. She could have died from hypothermia as well as getting frost bite, which is extremely painful. That poor girl!

Oh, yeah, there would be hell to pay.

From the Left said...

IS STUPIDITY REALLY A TALENT?

Ducky's here said...

No, Bob, when the lead is
"Educators Lack Common Sense ..."
it's a clear attempt to draw a sweeping generalization.

Doesn't give us insight into whether or not educators lack common sense any more than police, corporate CEO's or Puerto Rican municipal bond traders.

Anonymous said...

From Z:

Could someone point out how this is 'anecdotal'? It happened, there's an investigation, but it's anecdotal?

Also, this kind of behavior lacks common sense, and is brutally unkind and STUPID and dangerous, but does not speak for all educators in any way, shape or form.

AOW; I'd hesitate as a lawyer but I don't know all the facts ; I don't know how long the kid was practically naked in freezing weather, but who'd DO THAT?



Ed Bonderenka said...

All news is anecdotal and often wrong.
Facts, however, are facts.
Freezing Temp, near naked student, drill, authority figures aware of situation.
You'd have to be stupid to not infer stupidity, negligence, heartlessness, or fear of recriminations from superiors.

Bob said...

@Ed B. "All news is anecdotal and often wrong."

Agreed. Thanks for you perspective, Ed. The article, and information that followed, did reveal that the educators there were not using common sense. However, I don't automatically believe that all educators are a quart low on common sense. The educators I know are sensible people, but they have to operate within the strictures of silly rules that make no room for interpretation, like those zero tolerance rules we hear about.

My wife is a retired educator, and I know that she and her buddies were always thinking about how to get along with the administration, and at the same time educate the kids. It is a tough line to walk, sometimes.

Mustang said...

Well Ducky, titles rarely provide insight. A title has this purpose: draw attention to an article, and entice people to read it. As an educator, making considerable money at the public trough, one might think you would know this.

Ducky's here said...

Well that's all fine, mustang but the headline is like an establishing shot and conditions the reader. In this case to generalize against all public school administrators.

For the record:
I volunteer at the local High School and earn only a small stipend at the local junior college.

But what's more interesting is your apparent assumption that anyone involve in public education is sucking of the public teat.

Kid said...

The way I see it, we've devolved into a situation where rial lawyers have bullied society into placing themselves above all else. Logic, common sense, etc. Schools are a natural focus point for how this works.

On the one hand, instead of teaching kids about life by letting them experience some of it, we insulate them to the point that school isn't even available unless the weather is nice and no white stuff lies on the ground. A child who lives next door must arrive by school bus. We all know that kids don't have eyesight sufficient to allow them to see cars on a road they might have to cross.

I'm showing my young age here, but we walked to school up hill a mile every day in any weather except hurricane or tornado and we never had either. We loved it btw. Especially snow days. Pelting cars and each other with snowballs was great fun.

I think snow days are for the teachers and the hundreds of 'administrators' at each school these days.

Anyway, lawyers have taken over. As life is cyclical,lawyers will be dispensed with and probably replaced by news presenters. new presenters may in fact replace the entire government. There will be a lot less red tape. The difference will be that we'll have to find out what the laws in effect are each day. It'll be spontaneous, but who doesn't like spontaneity?

Ducky's here said...

The way I see it, we've devolved into a situation where trial lawyers have bullied society into placing themselves above all else. Logic, common sense, etc. Schools are a natural focus point for how this works.

----------
Well, that certainly clears things up.

Ducky's here said...

... school isn't even available unless the weather is nice and no white stuff lies on the ground.

------
More esoteric wisdom from kid.

Z said...

Bob, you're not inferring this teacher did the right thing because there are rules, are you?

Ed's right...freezing cold, near-nudity... WHAAAAT?

Always On Watch said...

Z,
I don't know how long the kid was practically naked in freezing weather

10 minutes.

From this source:

A St. Paul student in a wet swimsuit spent 10 bone-chilling minutes outside her school Wednesday when a false fire alarm interrupted her class in the school's swimming pool.

When smoke from a science project triggered a fire alarm at Como Park Senior High School, freshman Kayona Tietz ended up outside barefoot in her wet bathing suit and a towel. Her mother, Eva Tietz, took to the district's Facebook page to criticize the district's handling of the incident, saying the girl suffered minor frostbite to her feet.

Kayona, 14, and the school district have different versions of the run-up to the evacuation. In any case, says St. Paul Fire Marshall Steve Zaccard, the incident was unusual and could have been prevented.

"With the benefit of hindsight, it doesn't make any sense to evacuate kids who are soaking wet from a swimming pool into these temperatures when there's no evidence of smoke or fire in that part of the building," he said. "That could be dangerous."

Temperatures at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport were a few degrees below zero at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

The district said about 30 students were in a Como Park High physical education class at that time.

The district said about 30 students were in a Como Park High physical education class at that time.

"When the fire alarm went off, the teacher advised students in the pool to quickly dress and get outside," wrote Julie Schultz Brown, the district's communications director, in an email. "Two students chose not to."

Schultz Brown said parents of the two students were contacted after the incident and offered health services at the school, but they declined.

Kayona said she and another student lingered in the pool during free swim time at the end of the class. At that point, she said, students were free to start getting dressed -- and most had left for the locker room....


More at the above link.

My assessment? Outside the window goes a major part of the plaintiffs' possible case. The declining of treatment -- a declining on the part of the parents -- is a major factor in a civil suit. I know this for a fact because of the car accident I had back in 2005.

Another Kid said...

Roses are Red and is Ducky, Libmann, and Shaw.