What are you willing to do for your Child's Safety

content type

Summary

This episode explores the critical issues of school safety, violence, and the need for proactive security measures. Guest Jarred Weisfeld shares insights from his frontline experience, emphasizing transparency, security protocols, and parental involvement to protect students and staff.

Key topics

• School safety and security protocols
• Parental involvement and transparency
• Security measures including guards, drills, and technology

Titles

• School Safety Revolution: How to Protect Our Kids in 2024
• The Hidden Crisis in Schools: Security, Violence, and Parental Rights

Sound Bites

• "Darkness is falling on our country"
• "School safety is a parental right"
• "Legislation can make a difference"

Chapters

00:00
The Rise of Violence in Society

01:31
School Safety and Parental Responsibility

09:53
Mental Health and School Security

17:28
The Role of Law Enforcement in Schools

23:32
Accountability: Parents and Society's Role

24:51
Addressing School Safety Concerns

28:27
The Role of Parents and Community in School Security

32:39
The Importance of School Administration and Board Decisions

37:19
Challenges in School Environment and Student Behavior

40:35
Implementing Effective Safety Measures in Schools

Resources

• School Insecurity by Wayne Black
• Alyssa's Law (Legislation)
• Start Publishing
• Jared Weisfeld on LinkedIn

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Live from the Clarity from Chaos Studios heard worldwide, it's Dave Campbell. On every episode, Dave and his guests explore, discuss, and work on solutions to some of life's biggest challenges. So if you're ready, be prepared to be enlightened, amused, and even shocked by what you hear. And now, the real, the authentic, the one and only Dave Campbell.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Welcome everyone. I'm your host, Dave Campbell, and you are listening to Clarity from Chaos. I would like to thank you so much for making us part of your day. Ladies and gentlemen, darkness is falling on our country, and unless we understand and get involved, we will lose this great country of ours. The isolation created by and continues to be created by social media on our society, and the access to violent video games, I believe, is increasing the violence in our society, with a particular emphasis on our public schools and religious institutions. Efforts to combat this rise of violence is only being met with a very timid response. I believe this effort is being led by people who want to spread chaos and hate among us, and unless we stand up to it, it's only going to get worse. But before we move on, I'd like to play an excerpt from a movie released in 1976. And for those of you old enough, this was during the middle of the second worst presidency in our country's history, the Carter years. The movie was called Network, and Peter Flinch, aka Howard Beale, gave what I think summarizes where we are today after the four worst years of a presidency and a media empire controlled only by six people. So here we go, and I hope you enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared or losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe, and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad, worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is please at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel belted radios, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone. Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don't want you to protest, I don't want you to ride, I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, I'm a human being. God damn it! My life has value. So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Our guest on this edition of Clarity will help us explore the topic of violence in our public schools. He is someone who has been on the front lines leading a growing school safety movement. He is the CEO and currently the president of Start Publishing. Start is a publisher of high-quality titles in a variety of areas, such as science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, and how-to books. Currently, Start has over 6,000 titles, which are being distributed by Sheiman, Simon, and Schuster. Welcome to the show, Jared. Hi, thanks for having me, Dave. So how did you how did you get involved in in the effort of pushing you know the school safety piece? What what's the compelling piece behind that?

SPEAKER_04 4:37

Uh an incident happened at my uh children's school um that involved a kid bringing a box cutter to school, having it confiscated, later that day, stabbing a girl with a pencil, and then um writing uh there was a boy that you know said to the the child, can you just leave her alone? And the child created a kill list. Um later on that day, the same child uh looked on his Google Chromebook computer, not killing anyone. The kid remained in school. Um the parents of the boy were never notified that he was on a kill list. And when I found out, I kind of realized that, you know, people need to know transparency is important. And it's not an administrator's job to decide whether or not your kids are safe in school. That's a parent's job. That's parental, you know, that's a parental right. And that was being withheld from that parent. Now the school had told the parent, because the school told, you know, the the kid to go home and tell his parents that they were gonna be really angry. And so the kid thought that, you know, 11-year-old kid, he thought, you know, they were gonna be angry with him that he did something wrong. And so when he came home and told his parents, they thought he was crazy. Wait, all this happened in school and and nobody called us? Nobody said anything? Yeah. Nobody said anything. And and then the following Monday, the the mother called and asked the school, and they said that he, you know, wasn't telling the truth. And the mom said, Well, did he bring a weapon to school? And they said, No, it was an inappropriate item to have brought to school. And the mom says, Well, was it confiscated by the police? And they said, Yes. And then she said, Well, was there a kill list later on that day? And they said, No, it wasn't a kill list, it was a statement written on a piece of paper. Well, what did the statement say? Well, it said that, you know, bucket list, kill, and it named the two students. So basically they lied. Um, and then the mom said, Well, where's the where's that kid now? And they said, Well, he's in class with your kids. Oh, that's great. And the mom rushed to school and took the two kids out of school, um, her two kids out of school. And then, you know, there was a meeting that I was a part of with the police chief, the superintendent, the board member Pamela Stanley, superintendents, Dr. Melissa Varley, um, the police chief, uh, the principal of the school, and a detective. Um, and in that meeting, it was quite clear that their answer, not the police's answer, but the school's answer was to move my because I didn't want my kids in class with the kid. Their they wanted to move my kids' class to accommodate, you know, this child. Um, and I wasn't having that. I told the board member, Pamela Stanley, that she was a woke joke. Um, and then I asked, you know, a very simple question. You know, if it was your kid, would they be in school right now? And the police chief was the one that answered and he said no. Um, and so it was a battle. And then, you know, finally the police resolved the matter by getting a no contact order. I think the first in New Jersey against three 11-year-olds. So the kid had to leave school. And it wasn't the school that wanted the kid out, it was the police, it was the prosecutor. Um, they just didn't want the kid in in school. They thought he was dangerous. So, I mean, it it, you know, you have a problem in which like the school would rather take the chance of something happening than, you know, accommodate that child by putting him in a special school or homeschooled or whatever it may be that will cost them money. So like hiding it was was the best way. But I said to the school, like, you need to be transparent, you need to tell parents what happened, right? And they refused. So I did it at a board meeting. And little did I know that the superintendent had no idea that I knew it was a box cutter that the kid brought to school. So the superintendent said to the media it was an inappropriate item that was brought to school, um, not a weapon. And then proceeded to say some other stuff. Like this didn't it basically call me erroneous, which is a liar in the press. But, you know, what she didn't realize was that I knew it was a box cutter. And then she got all angry and then she leaked my emails to the media, right? So it was kind of like, how could we protect ourselves? And it was like just dig deeper and deeper and deeper. Right. Now that superintendent is no longer the superintendent, right? She's cleaning pools now in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So she's not in education anymore, which is a good thing. Um, the board member Pamela Stanley is still on the board, and the other board member, Dr. Foriger, who actually saw the kill list, not only are they still on the board of education, but they're in charge of the harassment, intimidation, and bullying um liaisons. So, I mean, it is what it is. You know, I've been fighting because there's, you know, six schools, a budget of roughly 63 million dollars, and there's only four security guards. So there's two schools that don't have security at all times. Right. And my argument, right, is we have equity of opportunity, right? Where every kid has the right to have a textbook, has a right to learn, has a right to have a Chromebook, lunch. Every kid also has the ability to feel safe in school. And so if you have four security guards for six schools, that's not equity of opportunity. No. So um it's like I always say, right, you can't have, you know, not every kid's gonna be six foot five and play in the NBA. Right. Not every kid is gonna be an A student in English, math, social studies, and science, right? It's just not possible. But what is possible is making sure that every school has a security guard. Um, and in our district with a $63 million budget, they do not. Um, and that's something I'm fighting for is to get every school to have a security guard.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Well, yeah, I I would agree. But and the flip side of that is the child that's expressing this violent behavior should be taken, you know, should be handled as well, right? The kids should feel safe, but the kid that has all of those violent tendencies, that needs to be, that needs to be discussed with um with you know the the proper medical attention and everything else. Um he shouldn't just be shuffled off to another school or or anything else, right?

SPEAKER_04 11:43

So that was one of the the main points um that I discussed with the police, um, that you know, we can't have this kid in another school. Right. This kid needs help.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:57

And so they agreed they were never gonna let the kid into another school, like, hey, you're gonna go to this town and you know, you're gonna, you know, do the same thing over there at that school. Right. I made sure that that wasn't gonna happen. So, um, because I I like getting him out of our school. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's like getting him into another school wouldn't have cured the problem, right? No, because it just moves it. Right. So you can't like that wasn't acceptable to me. So that was handled. The the part that really gets me is that you know, it took me to have the kid get the mental health therapy that he needed. Um, the school just kind of didn't do it, right? It it's the easy thing to overlook it. Um and when you have administrators that would rather have a kid in school and take that chance, right, as opposed to putting that child in home schooling or a school that deals with kids that that have these issues, um was quite troubling to me. You know, I I'm a big believer that just in general, if a kid is like severely autistic, right, they should be afforded the ability to go to a school that would, you know, that that caters to kids that are autistic. Um they, you know, unfortunately, parents have to fight. Autistic parents have to fight to get their kids the proper, and that's just not right. Um yeah, and budget-based security just doesn't work, right? It's you you can't put a a life like you you do what you have to do. You can't say, okay, we have a $500,000 this year to for security, right? You have to do what is appropriate. And sometimes, you know, maybe it's $1.5 million. Now, here's the kicker, Dave. How many, how much money do you think it costs to add two more security guards to the schools? And we're talking about retired SLEO3 officers. Probably less than $100,000. Yeah, it's $42,000 per officer. Right. Yeah, that's what I figured. Yeah, $84,000 on a budget of $63, roughly $63 million.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Right. And the FBI, as they've already shown with the incident in, I believe it was Michigan at the synagogue, where they came in and they trained staff for uh an active shooter incident. And that could be an active shooter, that could be, in your case, you know, a kid with a zip knife or, you know, a box cutter. It could be anything, right? Um, but it requires the training. And the FBI, I believe, is more than willing to come in and train on a periodic basis. Of course. These uh these retired people. Plus, you have all of the retired military individuals, just like you have, you know, policemen that do um uh side jobs, if you will. They have side gigs, you know. Um you you have you have the opportunity to bring those people in. For for I mean, you you can't put a uh a calculation around the the number uh relative to you know to saving a human life or stopping an incident. Just like um, you know, religious institutions now, it's not uncommon to see three or four sheriffs or whatever walking around in the congregation or in particular positions in a congregation during a service because of this precise threat. But we don't see that kind of active um safety and security around our public schools.

SPEAKER_04 15:53

Yeah, so schools and places of worship are considered um soft targets. Right. Um, and that's something that, you know, like for example, the, you know, in where the the principal saved all the kids' lives um by jumping on the the school shooter and getting shot. My big question was how'd that kid get into school? Right. Did he just walk in? Like, because the doors are supposed to be locked. And then the other school shooting where the the the guy uh you know took a gun and you know broke the glass and got in that way. Well, it's like five to seven hundred dollars to bulletproof the front door with glass. Um and that the kid never would have, you know, it never would have happened. So it's little things that we can do. And we, you know, we need to train kids and teachers not to open up the doors from the inside of the school. Right. Um, and these are things, and and homeland security also, by the way, would will come to schools uh if they need to and and talk to them about things that they need to look out for, uh, you know, dangerous things that, you know, they could see like uh well concerning behavior. But, you know, what I discovered the most throughout this entire process is that there are ways in which you could protect the schools. However, you have people that think that police officers are scary, that police officers are going to be there to arrest their children. Um, it's not like the old days where you know the police officers were welcome in the school, you know, you could play soccer and dodgeball with them. Now, you know, parents truly believe for some reason that parents are there to arrest children in school.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Well, which is not the case. No, but if you listen, if you look and listen, just for example, the silliness that went on in Minneapolis with ICE. Um people, you know, and and I blame this on the media, they have so degraded the level of respect for authority that you know we sit here and listened every day on the news at our politicians berating people that are trying to do the right things and everything else. And the kids are picking up on all of this, right? So, and you have illegals in probably in a lot of these schools where they're absolutely terrified that if you put an officer involved, they're gonna lose their child to, you know, to uh deportation or whatever. Um so the it comes with a lot of things, but nobody's stepping up to actually start to put some resolution around these. And we've got thousands of schools that are, to your point, are soft targets. And and there's very, very few state legislatures, much less our own political morons in Washington that are doing a damn thing about this.

SPEAKER_04 18:58

Yeah, so my thoughts um on Washington is very simple is if you don't have a school resource officer or you don't have security in your school, then you shouldn't get funding. Right? You just shouldn't get funding. And you'll get your funding when you protect your schools. Yeah. Because, you know, there has to be a way to strong arm districts into, you know, I mean, you have to look at it, it's like an insurance policy, right? It's an insurance policy to make sure that nothing's gonna happen in a school. So take the the the incident that happened two days ago where you had the security guard, right? He saved probably 140 lives. There was a there was a a school inside there that had 140 children. Right. Um, and if you didn't have a security guard there, like God knows what would have happened. So even though that security, I mean the security guard died, um, but he was able to fend them off and the school went into lockdown. And then all the surrounding schools went into lockdown as well. So, I mean, they do lockdown drills. You have to by law. Um, each state, you know, you have to do the lockdown drills. But hey, look, Florida is doing something really cutting edge. There's a district there that has like um like guardian angel drones that follow the SRO officer, and these things fly at 70 miles an hour. Um, and they're being implemented in in schools and pilot programs. And look, whatever we have to do to protect our children is what we have to do. Because like I always say, there's only two things, no two things that normal parents want, and that's for their kids to learn and their kids to come home safe. Right. Those are the two most important things. And I think that gets lost by administrators and bloated budgets, and you know, there should be no price on a you know, a child sitting in the middle.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

No, and and we constantly hear about how much money we're spending per per student, but we very rarely hear, if at all, how much we're how much we're spending or what we're doing to manage the safety of our our students.

SPEAKER_04 21:13

Well, you'll have no students if you don't have any security officers, right? Like everybody go to private school, the the school will go out of business. Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

And yeah. Yeah, and I think it ought to go to yeah, I we ought to take it up to the university level as well. Because, you know, we've seen we've seen recently several incidences where cameras are all over the place except for miraculously in the place where the shooting took place. Um so I you know, I think I I I just think all areas of assembly, rather it's a house of worship, uh, education or whatever, they need to be taking all of this very, very seriously because it it just Seems to me the level of violence against these targets is increasing almost daily.

SPEAKER_04 22:07

Yeah. I mean, think about this. The the typical school shooter used to be the loner white kid that used to kill his animals or regular animals, right? Now it's morphed. Now you have um transgender students, you have uh you have that that African American six-year-old kid that shot his teacher in the stomach, which just came out in the news that, you know, yeah, that they knew he had a gun.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Yeah, and and and she got dismissed. Uh, the the judge dismissed the charges against the um the principal who knew that this was an issue.

SPEAKER_04 22:48

Yeah, so they were waiting for the mom to come to pick up the kid. Um they knew he had it. It was the end of the day. They didn't want to like cause a stir. Meanwhile, like people had seen that gun throughout the day. And I I mean, they could have just literally called 911 and said, we have a kid that has a gun in school. Please, we need you. Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

But um But but here's the other thing, here's the other thing, Jared. Um, in the articles that I that I published over this particular incident, I was going to bring it up tonight and talking with you. Um there's no mention of the parents. There's no apparent or parental accountability around any of this. It's all what you and I have been talking about is um accountability to the school system to uh get security guards and everything else. The flip side of this is the parent side of it, who possibly has a child that is locked in, you know, the home alone kid because both parents are working and he's saturated with all of this video game crap and everything else. He's isolated, you know, he only has the internet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you know, ends up doing something like this. The parents should also be the front line of this, right? I talk about that as well.

SPEAKER_04 24:09

I talk about how um I find it hard to believe that parents don't realize that their kids are have swastikas in the house or like worshiping Adolf Hitler, have tattoos. Right. Um, or the fact that they have guns and ammunition. Um, I find it hard to believe that parents have no idea, do they not clean rooms? Do they not go into like rooms and they have to know? They just ignore it, or they think, oh my, it's just my child, he's he's not gonna do anything bad. But the the point is, is it's kind of like how'd that six-year-old get a gun? Right. Right? Did his parents not have it locked in a safe? Right. Um, and like how are these other kids, these 17 and 18-year-old kids, like, where are they getting these weapons from? They're getting them from their house. Right? And in order to like stop this, uh, you know, parents need to be thrown in jail, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:04

Yeah, but I don't yeah, I I don't want the discussion to be gun control because Oh no, no, I'm not talking about gun control. No, no, no, I know you're not, but that's where the conversation always ends up going, is where does a six-year-old get a gun? And you know, the parent should be held accountable for you know the the um access to a to a firearm.

SPEAKER_04 25:30

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, is that the parent, if the parent doesn't have their firearm locked, knowing that they have a six-year-old child, like that parent needs to be held accountable. Um you know, because that's the whole point of having gun safes, right? Is to keep them away from kids. Exactly. So go ahead. Yeah, no, so I'm not I'm not blaming, I'm I'm blaming the the parents.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Yeah, yeah. I was just gonna say, you know, this is this should not, and it always ends up being a gun control issue because politicians, that's the first place they jump is gun control on uh a tragic incident like this. But they they never really talk about the root causes of it. They never go after anything that would attribute to an individual being isolated all of his life, maybe possibly being bullied, having mental health issues and everything else. Because, you know, quite frankly, you can do some serious damage with a number two pencil if you have the right frame of mind. You know, it doesn't have to be a firearm because all if you put a pencil into somebody's eye socket, you know, it's uh gonna end up having the same effect. No, I agree.

SPEAKER_04 26:47

And the and the ultimate issue also is that, you know, teachers, like when I was growing up, like I was scared of my teachers. Yeah. Right? Yeah, you can't do it. Now the teachers are like scared of the children. Right. And it's it's it's done a flip. And uh that's a problem, is there's no accountability, it's not strict anymore. Right. And you have that issue of like the kid being in control because they don't want the kid to go home and tell the parents, and then the parents call the school, right? And then the school yells at the teacher. It's never the kid's fault, right? It's always like somebody else's fault in the parents' eyes. Right. So, you know, it's like the old saying is like the kid didn't get a D, right? The teacher's the one that didn't teach, and that's why the kid got the D. Right. Um, but I I think look, the real way to cure this problem, and it's not something that that's popular, and I don't care about being popular, but it's to have metal detectors before you enter the school, right? You have a police officer there, and you have them remove the weapons if there's any weapons from the kids. Those kids go, you know, to where they need to go with the police, and the kids go in, right? So that way you know that it's protected that way. Now the question is, is like, do you have some of these kids that open up doors that are in the school? And you can't legally lock the doors because you need like kids need to get out in case of an emergency. Right. So we have to educate the children, and teachers, by the way, do open up those doors as well. So we need to educate on why those doors should always be locked. So part of my situation was that um a teacher in my kids' school, like there was a lockdown drill, and the police went around and the teacher they opened up the door because the teacher didn't lock it. And then the police said, You need to lock the door, right? So then they went around for a second time and they opened up the teacher's door for a second time. Teacher didn't lock it again. So to me, that's a failed lockdown drill, right? Um, the school was touting it in emails, like, oh, we did a lockdown drill, everything went well, everything. No, it didn't go well, right? Like, just be honest. It didn't go well. We need to work on it, and we promise we will. And we'll like that's the only way is you just keep drilling. And if a teacher makes a mistake, you have to punish that teacher. Yeah. It can't simply be, oh yeah, just don't do it next time, right? It needs to be they get suspended. Like something has to happen so that other teachers in that building are like, oh no, we better make sure our doors are locked. So, and by the way, like a couple months later, or maybe like a year later, it was in a time frame, but they brought in a security consultant to, you know, watch a lockdown drill. And the principal choked, right, and said, This is not a lockdown drill, right? This is real. And you had kids scrambling, but you know, it was just a drill, right? He made a mistake. And he waited until the end of it to admit that he made a mistake. Um, and meanwhile, you had kids like thinking like, what's going on in here, right? So like they're not trained properly.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Yeah, exactly. And and our our like I said, our politicians, they don't know they don't even want to address it because one side sees it as you know uh uh grabbing for gun control, the other side is fighting gun control, but neither side is looking at the real issue. You know, the the the issue is not gun control. The real issue is we have vulnerable soft targets, and we have crazies walking around in the streets. For whatever reason, whatever their motivation is, they're looking at these things as a as a way to get their grievance out, right? They've been aggrieved for some reason, Lord knows what, whether it's the fact that they were born, they're the wrong color, they're whatever, their girlfriend, uh you know, it just could be a multitude of reasons. But until we start to understand the psychology of all of this and the psychology of what they're trying to do, and the fact that these schools are so vulnerable to something like this, uh we're gonna continue to see these kinds of things, and there's gonna be the loss of life. There's gonna, you know, people are lives are gonna be destroyed and everything else when we we could, if collectively put our heads together, solve a great deal of of this just by simply acknowledging and being honest about it and moving forward with it.

SPEAKER_04 32:02

I remember Ted Cruz um put up a bill um after uh Uvalde, I believe it was Uvalde, he um put up a bill saying that all the COVID relief money that the schools had that was extra, right, they should be forced to use that money for school security. Um and it didn't go through. Nope. Yeah. No. So that was that was a smart way to do it because all these schools had extra COVID money.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, precisely. But I like your idea that you just you you just stop the funding because every school, every school is on that, is is part of that meal ticket, right? Every school is part of that meal ticket. And you just cut the funding off until they can come up with a legitimate security plan, submit it, have it approved, have it implemented, and then and then audit on a very timely basis the actual input, you know, the implementation of it.

SPEAKER_04 33:04

Yeah, and another thing is that you know, we really have to watch who we elect to the board of education. Yeah. And that goes back to the parents, right? Yeah. So I always, you know, say to people before they move into towns, like, watch the board meeting and see if these parents the board members are are bat bat crazy.

unknown 33:24

Right.

SPEAKER_04 33:24

Um and if they are, like, don't move to that town. Um, so it's where you used to like now you can watch the board meetings and you can be like, oh no, yeah, yeah, yeah. I shouldn't have lived there. Um, but you know, there's simple things, especially in my town, that they have issues with. Like parents have to give their license now when they enter a school. And people think that that's like an invasion of people's privacy. And I say to them, right, so let me understand this, right? So you have to give a license to the school, which I'm shocked you haven't had to do like forever. And all the school is doing is making sure that the person that's coming into the building actually has a child in the school, right? Isn't on Meghan's law, uh, isn't uh there's not a custody dispute where like the kid might get kidnapped. And then they also need to know how many people are in the school in case of an evacuation. Right. Um, but they thought it was an invasion of privacy. And I, you know, I said, so you think the executive assistants and the assistants are gonna open up Kohl's cards? Like, what are they gonna do with your license?

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Well, you've got to, I mean, if you fly on an airplane, you've got to produce your license. Um if you vote in most places, you have to produce your license. So it's kind of like give me a break, you know. Uh if you've got a license, produce the damn thing. It's not like somebody's gonna steal your identity. But then you also have to think about it this way, right?

SPEAKER_04 34:48

Is like how'd they get to school, did they drive? And if they drove, like you need a license to drive. Right, exactly. Supposedly, right? So, you know, it's we really need to harden our schools. And it's not that difficult to do that. No. You just need people that are willing to do it.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Yeah, it just takes the will and the focus to do it. Um and and it takes unfortunately, it's gonna take a huge outcry from the parents to get it done. And that usually only happens after a tragedy.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

Yeah, no, it's you know, unfortunately, like in in our district, you know, they asked uh they took a survey of parents and about 69% of the parents um wanted security in the schools, in those two schools. Um and it was overlooked. They didn't add it to the budget. So, I mean, there's also other ways, right? Like you could take it out of like they could change the laws so that the capital improvement budgets, right? Like for like a boiler, like maybe they can use that. There are millions of ways in which they could get that money.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

If it was in if it was their child at risk and it was important enough, they'd fig figure out a way to do it. But but unfortunately, unfortunately, what is they usually look at it's somebody else's child, um, so therefore it doesn't impact them. Um and and there's all kinds of other silly, silly reasons for it, um, none of which make any damn sense at all. But unfortunately, that's where we're at.

SPEAKER_04 36:31

Yeah, we had a board member, uh, Dr. Forger, like, I don't know, a couple of years ago, asked a former business administrator, um, do you think because people wanted police officers in the schools, right? Do you think our elementary schools are safe? He asked that to a business administrator. You think he would have asked it to like a police officer or somebody? Right. Um, and she said, I'm not gonna answer that question. But the the reality is, is you know, he's an older man, right? Um, and you know, and it's not the Flintstones anymore, right? They're not rocks. These kids have guns. And it's a real problem now, you know, and he's fiscally like he he cares about not spending wasteful money, but it's not wasteful money, right? Like, if he had grandkids or kids or whatever it is in the in the school, maybe he's got grandkids in the school. I have no idea. But the point is, is that we should be thinking, and you know, I say this to the the superintendent, right? And I say it to the business administrator, right? You have 2300 of you have 2300 students in the school, right? From the the you know, the minute the bell rings in the in the morning to the to the end, right? You have 2300 kids, right? So those 2300 kids are your responsibility, right? So how are you gonna protect those 2300 kids?

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 37:58

How are you gonna like how are you gonna explain to parents, you know, that the kid's life in in elementary school is not as important as a kid's life in the high school or in the middle school? So that's something that, you know, you need to. I mean, listen, my my district clearly has problems, right? We had a teacher that just resigned and he's taking like $30,000 less money to go to another district. Um, and like I've never heard of a teacher taking uh less money to go to a to go to another district. We lost our principal at the high school. We lost our assistant principal at the high school. We just lost our principal at the middle school, right? So I think what we've been going like through principals like like it's nothing. And clearly there's there's an issue, right? That they they need to figure out. Um I don't like I don't know what the issue is. Maybe it's the board of education, maybe it's the superintendent, maybe it's the people that work in the like I have no idea, but clearly there's something wrong. Right. And the enrollment has drastically gone down. So kids aren't going, a lot of kids aren't going from the middle school to the high school. And I could tell you why is because the middle school, like there, you have kids that are literally defecating on the bathroom floor. You have kids that are peeing in the hand warmers to see if they'll work afterwards, right? So you have a problem and you don't want kids, right? Like kids that are there to learn, right? Don't want to go to a school where you have kids that do that kind of stuff. Right. So they leave. Um, and now we have like magnet schools, and kids are going to the magnet schools. So it's, you know, a lot of this, to be honest with you, is like look, teachers know when they have a kid that has a real problem. Right. Right. They need to speak up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

Right. But unfortunately Yeah, I was gonna say, unfortunately, our society more and more is putting the thumb on anybody that wants to raise an objection to whatever somebody else's, if they've got a louder voice, their ideology or their their viewpoint. Um, you know, we we treat whistleblowers with such disdain anymore when they're all they're trying to do for the most part is come forward and explain a problem so that it can get solved. Um, because I, you know, I I get the distinct impression we don't want to solve anything anymore. All we want to do is complain about it.

SPEAKER_04 40:40

Yeah. I mean, I hear stories all across the country from different parents that have similar issues. Some of them have issues that, you know, you wouldn't even understand why, you know, the the that kid is still in school, right? Right. So, or that kid hasn't like harmed themselves because of all the stuff that's been done to them. And the the issue is is like the schools for some reason, right, they they victim shame, right? It's like they're gonna protect the the person that's causing all these problems. Right. And, you know, and you know, I could tell you when I was growing up, right? Like, I wouldn't like I wouldn't step out of line. I like I I knew the ramifications, right? There were there might there were ramifications. Like if my principal went to the right, I went to the left, right? Middle school principal, he likes to high five these kids in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

No, it's uh no, yeah, this it's it's kind of like it's kind of like what I've seen in parenting. Parents want to be friends, they don't want to be parents. Teachers want to be friends, they don't want to be teachers or uh viewed as um um authority, right? They want they want to be part of it, not and and so they've got their roles completely skewed, right? Um teachers teachers should be there to teach and to you know to to to move their their knowledge into the students. They're not there to be a buddy or whatever with with the kids. That that's not where the that's not the goal. So the whole the whole paradigm is skewed.

SPEAKER_04 42:26

Well, you also have now, so when I was growing up, right, we you know, there were the kids that couldn't behave were in their own classroom, right? They weren't mixed in with the other kids. Now they're mixed in. So you have paraprofessionals all over the place that are there to like make sure that kids behave.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

So Yeah. So let's recap. Let's recap, Jared, on the things that need to be done. I'm we've talked about training. Um go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 43:00

Alyssa's law is a big law from Lori Aladeff, whose daughter died in Parkland on Valentine's Day. Um, that law is passed in numerous states where, you know, there's uh basically a panic, panic button, and teachers can lock down the school just by going on their school phones and and you know, punching in a number and the school will go straight into a lockdown. You have that, right? But the main thing that you need is you need to make sure that your doors are locked. You need to make sure that those front doors, if there's glass, they're bulletproof, which is only $500 to $700. It's cheap. And then you got to have a security guard there, and you have to train these kids, and you have to train the teachers and the principals and everything. Like, hey, listen, like if a kid opens up a door, like they need to have they need to be suspended, right? Like you need to show that you know there's a Yeah. And because when you open up the door, right? Like you don't know who's outside. Maybe, you know, like your maybe your friend knocked on the door and your friend that day decided he wanted to come to school and kill everybody. So the point is, is like, and and we're not saying, you know, give the math teacher and give the gym teacher guns, right? Like you want trained people. Like you want a security guard that's dedicated solely to protecting the students. And that's, you know, that's what I think parents need to go to their school boards. They need to, first of all, they need to realize I had no idea. I'm going to be completely honest with you. I had no idea that every school in our town didn't have a security guard. I thought it was just like, when I found out, I was like, what do you mean they don't have security guards? Right. And they just didn't. And it makes zero sense to me. It's not a teacher's job, right? To like tackle a student. It's just not. It's it's a security guard's job. It's like with that principal, right? It wasn't his job to tackle that kid and get shot. But, you know, it was an SRO. But but the door, like, I have no idea how the kid got into school. Like, these are things that we need to analyze and do autopsies on and say, okay, well, this school did it wrong. But we have to be vocal about it. There, there needs to be a national, you know, movement that says, hey, okay, this is what happened here. And we need to make sure that it doesn't happen here. Right. So the and and that doesn't, for example, like fire drills, right? Like I'm not a big fan of fire drills because on fire drills, somebody pulls down the fire drill, everybody goes outside, it's open season. Right? Somebody could just, I mean, so I'm a big believer that the fire drill should only occur if you actually smell fire. It shouldn't be a fire drill. It should be like if you smell fire, like that's when the fire alarm should go off. Right. But, you know, we really, really, really need to, you know, speak to the government and the and the officials, the government officials, and say, hey, listen, this aid's gotta stop, right? You can't keep giving aid to these schools. Right. Well, you have to step up.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

Yeah, the politicians need to step up. They need to put their big boy pants on and actually solve an issue that's becoming more and more um an occurrence in our society. And it and it's shameful because there's too many simple steps that that can be implemented that will solve a lot of this.

SPEAKER_04 46:38

You know what they do in Florida if you don't have a school resource officer or a trained officer of some kind in your school? Superintendent doesn't get paid.

SPEAKER_02 46:47

There you go. There you go. Um, so everybody moved to Florida. Um w we've been talking to Mr. Jerry, Jared Weisfeld, and I I can't thank you enough. Where can people go out on do you have a social media place where people can go get information, Jared?

SPEAKER_04 47:08

Yeah, they can just reach out to me on LinkedIn. Okay. And if you have any questions about any the safety of your child, any advice you need, um, I'd be more than willing to help you and put you in touch with the the appropriate person. I mean, there's nobody better in the sec school security business than Wayne Black. And there's a s there's a book you could read that he wrote called School Insecurity. And that'll tell you more about how you can um protect your your children at the school.

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Well again.

SPEAKER_04 47:38

And he's actually, I think I just read he's doing another book on how to protect places of worship, houses of worship.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Oh, there you go. Yeah. Again, we've been talking to Mr. Jared Weisfeld, and I can't thank you enough for coming on. And this is this is a topic of the utmost importance because A, it's it's it's a complex problem, but B, it it's it's with a little bit of resolution could be greatly the number of these incidents could be reduced a great deal if people, you know, with the awareness and people just start starting to react to hardening their schools for the safety of the kids. Yeah, I just I just wish people, you know, spoke up more. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, we live at a time where speaking up about problems doesn't seem to be the proper way to do it because somebody's always out there wanting to uh put their thumb on it. So anyway, Jared, it's been an absolute pleasure, sir, and I hope to have you back on again. Thank you so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more Clarity from Chaos shows on demand, go to Clarity from Chaos Podcast.bussprout.com or send Dave an email at info at ClarityFromChaos.com for information on previous shows. You can also listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Twitter, or Google Podcasts. Until next time, please remember it's not about waiting for the screen to pass. It's about learning to dance in the bridge. Be well, everyone.