EDITORIAL: District flounders as school violence continues

Parents want solutions about violent and dangerous occurrences on school campus, but Clark County School District officials aren’t providing any.

It’s been a rough few weeks for students at Desert Oasis High School. This month, the school had hard lockdowns on two consecutive days. On the first day, police responded to a report of a student with a firearm. On the second day, fights broke out. Police eventually arrested an adult male and a juvenile and cited several others. On the third day, most students locked themselves out. Estimated attendance that day was about 20 percent.

Just a few days later, a student brought a gun on campus. Police confiscated the gun and arrested the juvenile. In response, principal Jennifer Boeddeker sent out an email to parents.

“In an effort to keep you informed of matters happening within our Desert Oasis High School community, I want to make you aware of an incident that occurred today on campus,” she wrote.

Open communication is good, but parents need more than information. They want a plan to prevent such occurrences from happening in the future. They want specific steps that the school and district are taking to stop the violence. They want someone in the education bureaucracy to act as if this is a hair-on-fire crisis that’s terrifying to children and hindering their education.

But that’s not how most monopolies react. Their customer base is stuck. That allows Superintendent Jesus Jara and district higher-ups to continue with “equity” objectives that clearly aren’t working, They include reducing expulsions and juvenile justice referrals despite the surge in violence.

It’s not going well, and the problems go far beyond Desert Oasis. Here’s what Angela Mobley, a teacher-librarian at Sedway Middle School, told the Board of Trustees on Thursday.

“Students are being bullied, they’re wandering through the hallways, they’re just breaking out of the doors, dancing on tables, not attending class,” she said. “No one’s doing anything about it.

This is yet another reason that Nevada families need school choice. Give parents a portion of the per-pupil funding the school district receives and let them choose the school that best works for their children — and can keep them safe.

If more parents had the option to leave, you would soon see Mr. Jara taking real steps to improve school safety as student populations dropped. Instead, you have kids suffering in a situation summed up perfectly by parent James Bayliss speaking to the board: “You guys have educations, Ph.Ds. But where’s the brains?”