Lieu Introduces School Safety Bill: How About School Choice?

The Newtown Connecticut mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School was just devastating. Gun enthusiasts in Congress, the NRA, and liberal gun control advocates like Michael Bloomberg have all stepped forward to condemn the violence and offer a plethora of solutions.

Never letting a crisis go to waste, South Bay state senator Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) has reintroduced legislation which he had sponsored in 2011with State senate Darrell Steinberg. Their legislation would require schools to have a comprehensive emergency response plan in place, specifically in response to an armed intruder or assailant on campus. Schools which failed to comply would risk losing state finances. He is reintroducing this bill in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting, in which deranged mass murderer Adam Lanza killed twenty first graders and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

State Senate President Darrell Steinberg commented:

"The legislature has a responsibility to do what it can to ensure basic safety requirements are enforced in our schools," Steinberg said. "The safety of our children demands 100 percent compliance."

This assertion is laughable in light of the quashing of SB 1530, which would have freed up school districts to dismiss perverted personnel from the classroom. Lieu’s bill died in the state fiscal committee, perhaps in part because the teachers unions played a subtle role in killing this bill, just as they pressured assemblymembers to quash SB 1530.

The notion that our legislature wants to improve public education remains incredible, and voters should remain incredulous, since Sacramento politicians have been holding school funding hostage every year, with the latest “hold-up” revolving around Prop 30. Our schools face growing pressures to boost test scores, protect our children, and furnish tax dollars for the growing number of retirees from our schools, yet who cannot be replaced with a consistent workforce.

At another glance, it is nothing short of a miracle that one of state senator Lieu’s bills did not advance to a final vote or disgrace the governor’s desk for signature. Unlike his other bilious boutique bills, this legislation possessed some merit. Still, to impose a financial penalty on schools which are already overburdened with pension and benefits obligations to administration and attending curricular staff (not just the teachers), along with diminished revenues for the classroom

State Senator Ted Lieu does not seem worried about the efficacy of our schools, nor the well-being of our students in the classroom.

He wants to fine schools that do not have a comprehensive emergency plan in case of disasters, earthquakes, or shooters on campus. If any group of people should be fined for non-compliance, it should be our state legislature, which wants to raise taxes, increase spending, yet refuses to curtail spending with comprehensive budget and pensions reforms. They should be held accountable for sitting by and doing nothing while another “massively armed assailant”, the public sector unions, continue to rob this statement of responsive leadership and fiscal discipline, as they intimidate legislators whose campaigns they pay for (like outgoing Betsy Butler and Ted Lieu)

As far as natural disasters go, our schools have their “duck and cover’ drills in place.

As far as earthquakes go, duck and cover remains the staple of every school.

Instead of fining schools for “failing to plan”, Lieu should rescind the “gun free zone” legislation which prohibits any personnel from bringing a firearm onto the campus. One armed guard would have neutralized Adam Lanza in Connecticut.

Still, Senator Lieu’s upset about school problems and conflicts would suggest that more government intervention and imposition will solve all the problems, as they have for the past decade in California, which now boasts the highest level of unemployment and the worst climate for job creation.

Aside from the physical, natural, or homicidal dangers to our schools, when will Senator Lieu deal with the more latent yet still more dangerous problems afflicting publication education?

Even though the state legislature boasts of a mere “one billion dollar deficit” for this year, the revenue shortfalls are still cascading all over the state. How many teachers are still looking for work, while school districts remain top heavy with administrators, deputy superintendents, and assorted consultants? Manhattan Beach Unified has hired former superintendents as ad hoc consultants to do the jobs which district administration were hired to do in the first place. Los Angeles Unified School District has outlaid math and reading coaches to supervise teachers, when most of the time they micromanage the creativity and authority of the teacher while receiving bloated salaries. How many inspectors-general does a school have to hire before they finally concede: “We have met the enemy, and he is us?”

One simple solution would force schools to provide comprehensive school safety plans, as well as proper disbursement of school funding, including much-needed pension and medical benefits reforms: public school choice with a voucher. If Senator Lieu cares so much about the children, why not let their parents choose where they send their kids to school? Why should students suffer in substandard schools which have no incentive to do anything, since the families have to enroll their students in the school in the nearest zipcode?

Instead of charging schools for not providing emergency plans with more withholding of state funds, state Senator Lieu (along with recently elected Richard Bloom of Santa Monica) should press for school choice for all Californians.