SCHOOLS MUST BE SAFE PLACES, BUT NOT POLICE STATES

George McCrackin Had To Go.

The veteran principal of Stratford High School resigned the post
Monday, one hopes with a push from Berkeley County School officials.
They're finding him another job, one that will allow him time to
prepare for the class-action suits prompted by what happened at his
school on the morning of Nov. 5. If I'm one of the district's
attorneys, I'm hoping Mr. McCrackin will use his time to practice
contrition. It is among the skills he clearly lacks.

Mr. McCrackin has had numerous opportunities to attempt to set things
right since the morning he unleashed Goose Creek police on 100 of his
students - starting that day, when he could have said "Whoa, fellas,
this ain't what I had in mind."

From all outward appearances, the roadblock to such a move was Mr.
McCrackin's belief that it is fine to unleash cops, guns and dogs on
children. Mr. McCrackin said he did not know the police officers would
take the actions they did until they arrived. And he said that once
they were on the scene, they were in charge. A review is under way to
determine whether the police officers' actions were legal. That is a
separate issue. The problem for Mr. McCrackin is there is no
indication he thought his or the officers' actions were wrong.

Remember, absolutely no illegal drugs were discovered in the
shakedown. More than a hundred students were held at gunpoint anyway,
most of them forced to lie on the ground, a number of them handcuffed.

It the aftermath, advocates for the officers' actions have said the
force was justified to keep schools safe from the scourge of illegal
drugs. They have said that where drugs are found, violence often
follows. Those justifications are more than a little ironic. Go
web-surfing for "George McCrackin" and you will find that he has
become the poster boy for legalizing drugs. His actions of Nov. 5 were
so over-the-top that the folks who want to legalize drugs believe he
wins them points with the public. Phrases such as "jack-booted thugs"
are sprinkled liberally throughout those accounts.

I don't want to see us legalize the addictive drugs that are killing
so many of our country's children and snuffing out the potential of
others. I think that school resource officers are a great, positive
presence and among the best investments that local governments can
make to help their schools. I am among the sort of folks who will
support and use the public schools until the last dog dies. But if I
were a parent of a child at Stratford High School, Mr. McCrackin would
be gone or we would.

There are countless ways Mr. McCrackin could have handled his
suspicions about drug activity that would have been better than the
one he chose. The former principal and the Berkeley County schools are
fortunate that something worse didn't happen that morning. I'm not
naive enough to think that all of the children in that hallway are
angels, discipline-wise. What if one of them had decided to prove just
how tough he or she was? Someone could have ended up dead. The adults
in charge had a duty to exercise their authority more responsibly.

Berkeley County Superintendent Chester Floyd has established a task
force to review district policy in the wake of the incident. His
charge to the group indicates he understands the complexity of the
issues involved. Dr. Floyd has asked the panel to concentrate on
keeping drugs off school campuses, keeping students drug-free,
protecting students' rights and treating all students fairly.

That mission needs to be looked at more closely, nationwide, by law
enforcement, principals, school district officials and parents.
Unfortunately, the Stratford incident seems to be an extreme example
of what The New York Times this week called "the growing
criminalization of student misbehavior." Those awful kids. We don't
know what to do with them, so let's just throw them in the slammer.

Here is an example from the article: When a 14-year-old girl arrived
scantily clad at a Toledo, Ohio, school, she refused to change to meet
the dress code for school officials or her mother, once she became
involved. The child was handcuffed, placed in a squad car, taken to
juvenile court, booked on a misdemeanor and placed in jail. Over what
The Times described as a "low-cut, midriff top."

There are many times when my mother-in-law's homespun wisdom serves me
well in the challenge of child-rearing. It seems virtually the entire
educational and parenting world could use a dose of it these days,
particularly the part where she says, "Remember which one of you is
the adult."

Yes, we've got to do a better job of keeping decorum and respect in
classrooms. Absolutely, we have got to keep schools drug-free. But we
have got to do those things in this country without turning our
schools into police states and war zones.