A Predators Path

Elementary school children fresh “prey” to predators! In a narrow section of west Montgomery, AL, alone, according to the Alabama Department of Public Safety Community Info Center’s website, there are 48 registered sex offenders (plus several hundred arrested, but not registered) in zip code 36105. The location of these sex offenders is either on the route or within a dangerous range of the planned new walking route of these elementary school children each school day, the 2011-12 school year, from their communities to Davis Elementary School. The Montgomery Public School System (MPS) is not providing school buses along this route, which, if done, would countermand or nullify the “sex predator” condition and provide a non-stressful condition for the children who will need to be mentally prepared to study when they reach the school. In essence, what would ordinarily be a 6 minute ride for our children, now shall become a 45 minute nightmare for them. The playground for these predators in this section of west Montgomery consists of a plenty of clandestine and concealed cover provided by poorly police surveillance, insufficiently lighted streets, abandoned houses, unpaved streets for safe walking against moving vehicles, and streets aligned with shrubbery and overgrown bushes and ditches. Even for “street smart” elementary school aged children, this is an untenable, indefensible condition in which to subject them. Obviously, the parents are not doing this; rather, the higher educational officials of MPS are doing this by taking the children out of their familiar community school environment and transferring them to a foreign environmental school. In this situation, they will, undoubtedly, have mixed-emotions, rendering them uncomfortable and uneasy, which will not condition nor prepare their minds to be focused on the task at hand. This is what is commonly known as “built-in failure.” Building on to the built-in-failure concept, what about children with a variety of disabilities, physically and mentally? These are conditions aside from the ordinary predator issue raised above; rather, these students constitute a significant number of elementary school enrollees. Yes, these are human beings with special needs. Have they been forgotten in this process of change? What are at least two alternatives to this faulty, illogical, and unreasonable condition to which the school children in this narrow section of west Montgomery are being set-up for? First, money should be, and can be, found to keep the neighborhood schools open. Second, where this cannot be done, for bona fide and justifiable reasons---with the parents and community’s buy in, walking partners, for security, and school patrol guards, for safety, will be needed. Is there anyone out there, as a change agent, to hear this clarion call for help? Our children need educating, not dissipation.

Karen Jones Montgomery, AL