Milwaukee School Board: NO HANDCUFFS

A program allowing limited use of flexible handcuffs to restrain violent students in the Milwaukee Public Schools had a very brief life.

The flexicuffs proposal set off a firestorm of criticism.

All that outrage has been rewarded by the Board's vote to drop the flexicuffs policy.

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The new Milwaukee School Board voted late Tuesday night to repeal the approval the prior board gave less than two weeks ago to allow handcuffs to be used by safety aides on out-of-control students.

The action came on a 5-4 vote at 11:25 p.m., after a five-hour meeting.

Five hours! Yikes!

The action approved Tuesday night calls for board President Peter Blewett to appoint a task force on safety and violence to report back to the board in July and for a permanent board committee on safety to be created.

A task force and a committee is a circuitous route to take to make the schools safer.

...The handcuff policy has sparked lengthy debate in recent weeks, with many school officials saying it would be a tool that school safety aides need to deal with increased violence while opponents, largely from African-American organizations, said it would make things worse.

Where are the African-American organizations when it comes to addressing all the violence at MPS?

Cue the crickets.

...A letter calling for the handcuff proposal to be repealed, signed by two state senators and seven state representatives, was read to the board by state Sen. Lena Taylor.

The letter says, "The use of flexicuffs to restrain students adds a criminal stigma to what may in most cases be an emotional loss of control."

Safety aides would not be adequately trained to use the plastic cuffs and MPS would be vulnerable to lawsuits, the letter says.

The signers are Taylor and Sen. Spencer Coggs and state Reps. Pedro Colón, Jason Fields, Tamara Grigsby, Frederick Kessler, Barbara Toles, Annette Polly Williams and Leon Young. All are Democrats from Milwaukee. Several were present at the meeting.

This "criminal stigma" stuff is a joke.

Act like a thug then you get treated like one. That's not a stigma. That's a consequence.

If "an emotional loss of control" means that a student is putting others in danger, then such an outburst calls for action and restraints.

In the larger community, violence is often born of "an emotional loss of control." Cuffs are in order in those instances. Why not at school?

Anyway, I fail to see how the "criminal stigma" of flexicuffs is a bad thing when a student is acting like a criminal. That's an important lesson.

It should be remembered that students would NOT routinely be put in flexicuffs. Such measures would be reserved for rare cases.

Wendell Harris, chairman of the education committee of the Milwaukee chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said: "We will not rest till this issue is taken off the table. . . . There will be no compromise to re-enslaving our children."

With all due respect, what a load of crap!

"Re-enslaving our children" -- Give me a break!

This proposal was never about treating students like slaves.

That rhetoric is ridiculous, though it was very effective in getting people riled up over the cuffs policy. (Five hour meeting!!!)

Harris makes it sound like the Milwaukee School Board wanted to put African-American children in shackles, for no other purpose than to demean them and make them feel like property that could be bought and sold.

THAT'S ABSOLUTELY INSANE!

It's extremely troubling that the flexicuffs proposal caused so much upset but the routine violence in the schools is virtually ignored.

When was there a five hour meeting about brawls, drugs, and LOADED guns in the public schools?

When was there a five hour meeting about truancy?

When was there a five hour meeting about the drop-out rate?

The flexicuffs proposal didn't deserve the attention it got. The fact that students are not graduating and getting the skills they need to get jobs or pursue higher education is the real disgrace.

Among remarks from speakers were calls for a recall of Andrekopoulos and a student strike if the policy is not repealed.

This is so lame!

Andrekopoulos backed down. He wimped out. He did what the mob against flexicuffs wanted. Why would they want to recall someone they can so easily manipulate?

And the student strikes are really stupid.

Adults were suggesting that the students walk out of class? There's a brainless idea!

So many students aren't learning as it is. Why suggest that they take more time away from the classroom?

A worthy strike would be a walk-out by students demanding that the violent students be controlled or removed from the school so the others can go about getting an education.

If only all this energy that the flexicuffs proposal brought out could have been harnessed to actually improve the schools.

If only parents would be as interested in monitoring their children's educational performance and being aware of their children's activities as they were over the cuffs.

Then, maybe there wouldn't have been a need for the Board to suggest trying the flexicuffs in the first place.