Today is a day of wonder

The Pinellas County School Board abandoned integration in 2007. Was that the cause of this absolutely devastating article in the Tampa Bay Times.  Here are some excerpts: First a look at the situation in general.

• At the five schools where the population is mainly African-American children have been shoved, slapped, punched or kicked more than 7,500 times since 2010 — the equivalent of eight times a day, every day, for five years straight.
• Last year, there were more violent incidents at the five elementary schools than in all of the county’s 17 high schools combined. 
• Incidents at the schools have more than doubled since 2010, even as other schools in Pinellas saw a drop in violence.
• For years, district leaders gave the schools the same number of employees to handle eight times the amount of violence faced at other elementary schools. Teachers at the schools describe calling for help in their classrooms only to be ignored because no one was there to respond.
• Teachers are overwhelmed. Many said they had little training and no idea how to get students under control. More than half the teachers at the schools requested transfers in 2014. Several have been taken away in ambulances after suffering panic attacks or being injured by their students. 
• Until recently, district officials under-reported serious incidents to a state clearinghouse that tracks dangers in the classroom — an apparent violation of state law that made the schools seem safer than they really were.

And now for some individual examples:

• At Campbell Park, a second-grader threatened to kill and rape two girls while brandishing a kitchen knife he carried to school in his backpack. 
• At Fairmount Park, a 9-year-old hit a pair of kindergartners in the head with a souvenir baseball bat. 
• At Maximo, a group of kindergartners pinned a classmate down on the playground, pulled off her pants and fondled her.
• At Maximo in 2012, an 11-year-old repeatedly harassed a female classmate, telling her he wanted to have sex with her. Then he threatened to kill them both so they “could be married in hell,” according to a police report. 
• The next year, at the same school, a 10-year-old was slapped, punched, choked, body-slammed, stomped and kicked in the face in a cafeteria fight over a Lego action figure. 
• At Campbell Park in 2010, a second-grader took a 6-inch, serrated kitchen knife to school and told classmates he was going to stab a girl in the back because she liked another boy.