The bill sounds innocent enough if you just read the title, it’s the Student Bill of Rights (SB 233). Because we all support students and want them to be successful and have rights. Who wants to vote against student rights? Nobody. However, that shouldn’t be the name of the bill. The bill’s name should be, No Campus Police Act, Violent Schools Act or the Violent School Sanctuary Act. If signed into law, this bill will turn already-struggling schools into campuses with uncontrollable gang-violence into sanctuaries. Additionally, it will help to further empower groups like Antifa that have been recruiting kids out of high schools when kids see the train wreck of an education system we have and turn to activism in support of Socialism and Communism to solve their problems.
But it gets worse. This bill is very similar to policies implemented by schools that have seen mass shootings or other violent tragedies. If you were the father of Meadow Pollack, whose daughter was killed in Parkland, Florda’s high school shooting, you’d be blaming the so-called NM Student Rights Act and it’s sponsor Senator Linda Lopez, for your daughter’s death. Here’s what grieving father Andrew Pollack had to say about his daughter’s unnecessary death:
“The confessed shooter allegedly threatened to kill other students and threatened to rape. He threatened to shoot up the school, according to the sheriff’s office. Classmates said he brought knives and bullets to school. He wrote hideous racial slurs on his backpack. He carved swastikas in the lunchroom tables.
But the assistant principals at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School didn’t have him arrested. Rather, they simply banned him from bringing a backpack to school and frisked him every day, according to the sworn testimony of the security guard who searched him, for fear he’d bring a deadly weapon and kill.
Broward’s policies allowed juveniles convicted of crimes as serious as murder and rape to go back into normal classrooms. Broward’s “Policy 5006” said that referring serious felonies like sexual assault and arson to the police was optional. Principals were trained to not cooperate with law enforcement, refusing to even tell officers whether suspected felons were on campus.” (Read the entire article here.)
Concerned? If you’re a parent, grandparent, educator, individual working in a school, or someone who doesn’t like to see school shootings (virtually everyone but Sen. Linda Lopez) you should be. The excerpt we’re sharing of the bill contains troublingly similar language to the policies found in the Parkland High School policies.
Here’s some text from SB 233:
Students have the right to a learning environment that is free of cruel and unusual including: security personnel, school police, school resource officers or other law enforcement officers;
(2) freedom from over-policing in school; (3) freedom of speech and of the press; and (4) the right to petition and peacefully assemble with the purpose of improving the school, classroom and learning environments.
K. Students have the right to:
(1) due process and to be considered innocent until proven guilty;
(2) transparency within the discipline process; and (3) freedom from searches of personal property by school security, school police, school resource officers or other school personnel without reasonable cause and to have their parents notified if such searches do occur.
L. Students have the right to public schools that: (1) seek alternatives to a police presence, whether by school security, school resources or other law enforcement officers; (2) are free of immigration enforcement; (3) are free from the criminalization of youth; and (4) seek alternatives to suspension and expulsion policies and in which students are given a clean slate each year in alignment with restorative justice practices.
Where would we be without cops on campus? If Sen Linda Lopez’ “Student Bill of Rights?” passes? we will find out.
Contact Senator Linda Lopez and ask her why she wants to make our schools dangerous:
- Capitol Phone: (505) 397-8833
- Home Phone: (505) 831-4148
- Email: linda.lopez@nmlegis.gov
Imagine this scenario, but with no police. Would YOU feel safer knowing police may take ten minutes to get to a school campus?
There were six or seven of us adults huddled in a bathroom (the daycare’s “safe room”) with a dozen toddlers and infants. The high school next door was locked down due to a bomb or gun threat and we sheltered in place as we waited for cops to search cars at the high school. It was terrifying because in our safe room we couldn’t see or hear much. I thought about how little could be done if something serious were to happen at our little building just a block away from the high school. I was a work study at the daycare meant to service teens who had kids in high school, so when the high school locked down, so did we…with all our little ones and babies. Without cops it might be ten minutes before a response to an incident could occur. And, even as it was we waited in the cramped space for hours, but imagine the fear of knowing there are no campus police?
If this is a real scenario (and it is– it happened to me) how can our legislators really believe this is a good bill?
Political Fireball 