Trenton City schools are weapons of mass destruction

L.A. PARKER: City schools are weapons of mass destruction

Imagine a brand new $135 million high school with beautiful floors, an auditorium, expansive gymnasium, science labs, beautiful cafeteria, and a roller coaster that can take you to any bathroom.

Sweet.

Now imagine that same school filled with a number of inadequate teachers who milk the system and make tenure sound like a birthright.

Add a number of students who, as they did yesterday, continue to bring embarrassment to the city of Trenton, their families and themselves with violence.

A knife and scissors fight luckily did not deliver a femme fatality.

Show me a girl who carries a knife in her bra and I will show you a child in need of serious help.

We can build schools that look like the Taj Mahal, but without a change in direction regarding personal responsibility, Trenton will be a doomsday project ready to explode at a moment’s notice.

Trenton needs new schools, but this city’s education system and social system first needs a major overhaul.

Granted, it’s not all kids at Trenton High because I attended a Haiti relief event at the Chambers St. campus on Saturday, one made beautiful by the school’s Inspirational Chorus.

These kids were wonderful, but there is a fear that this strong-voiced company is about as far from the norm as Venus or Mars.

Our city cannot take much more of this crap that allows parents to check out of their kids’ lives, allows teachers to act only as prison guards who spend their day just keeping the lid on, and featuring administrators who make extraordinary salaries with few positive results.

If this were my school district, today would start with a visit to Trenton High accompanied by parents, police and teachers who care.

There would be a locker sweep as parents made every complaint in the world while calling the ACLU.

The message would be simple — from this moment until we head home for summer break, life and times at Trenton Central High School will be different.

No cell phones, text messages, tweets or twitters, head wraps, baggie pants, T-shirts, or cussing.

All teachers will be required to stand guard in every hallway until students reach their assigned classrooms.

All detentions will require students to perform certain school duties — sweeping floors, collecting garbage on school grounds, cleaning the gymnasium, etc.

City officials and education administrators discounted an idea here that school uniforms are needed throughout the district but it’s still on the table.

“We wanted the students to participate in choosing uniform colors,” school officials said. Maybe they should ask students which weapons they should be allowed to bring on campus.

L.A. Parker is a Trentonian columnist.
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