New York has often found itself on the cutting edge of positive progress in the educational community. There's a reason why Geoffrey Canada and the work of the Harlem Children's Zone are recognizable to anyone even remotely interested in education.
Dallas, in the past few years, has been another city wrapped up in those conversations. Not unlike New Orleans, Chicago, Minneapolis, and others, Dallas is a city eager, and sometimes willing, to continue updating our century old education system to respond to the needs of our students. New York may have beat Dallas to the punch, but it didn't have to.
There are people in this city that think we do our children a disservice by allowing them to be labeled as uncontrollable distractions at the age of 5 and banished from the school building. Dallas could have made headlines sooner. Certainly, Trustee Miguel Solis wanted that. I don't disagree.
The metal detector thing will be a tougher sell, especially since a student side stepped one and shot himself last school year, but let's be honest, a lot of the kids just walk around them anyway. That's if they are even plugged in. I don't think those are going anywhere anytime soon even though they do only appear in certain schools in certain areas and do contribute to negative feelings about school.
This isn't about "tools for teachers" or any other politically charged rhetoric being used to maintain the status quo or make people believe that you actually know what you're talking about. This is about making it more difficult for people to give up on the kids that people are already giving up on. This is about giving our students a chance to learn and grow before being labeled and discarded before they know the alphabet.
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