Keeping students safe

This week we asked our parent panelists: Is enough done at Newport-Mesa schools (and others elsewhere) regarding traffic and the safety of students?

There is always more to be done to keep students safe, especially in our post-Sept. 11 world. Everyone, and especially teenage drivers, is in such a rush. Students carrying flags to alert drivers in crosswalks around schools is a good idea.

While traffic safety is very important, I am just as concerned that we also protect the minds and hearts of our students. Parents have the expectation that administrators will protect their children from teachers whose personal opinions, when shared in the classroom, may undermine the values students learn at home.

Parents expect their children’s minds be filled with knowledge when they go to school, but some teachers veer from their prescribed course of study and share personal opinions to try to persuade students to accept their viewpoints. This is not an issue of free speech. If controversial issues are discussed, teachers are required by district policy to share all sides of the issue.

I know of a situation last year in which a teacher frequently showed movies that had a political message. The teacher shared controversial personal viewpoints and downplayed students’ opposing ones. One student, who felt uncomfortable listening to the teacher’s personal views, confronted the teacher. The student’s parents complained to the teacher and administrators. Fortunately, the parents had given this child a good moral foundation, and the teacher’s views did not change the student’s mind.

Because the teacher is an authority figure, some students, who may not be as well-grounded by their parents in moral principles, may adopt the teacher’s personal views.

With the purging of faith-based values from public schools, students must accept relativism and secular humanism as the predominate worldviews. But this poses a dilemma for any student from a home with traditional family values. Should students have to put their values and beliefs aside in the classroom? Maybe students should wave a flag, so the teacher, in the interest of intellectual honesty, is reminded to share opposing viewpoints.

Parents must prepare their children for a possible assault on their family’s values with the same forethought and diligence practiced when teaching them to look both ways before crossing the street.

* WENDY LEECE is a Costa Mesa parent, former school board member and member of the city’s parks and recreation commission.

I believe that for the most part the school district and the cities do a good job with traffic and traffic safety. The schools usually respond pretty quickly when something happens that points out the need for additional safety considerations. The crossing guards are conscientious, and the school staffs are usually actively involved.

Most of the schools in the district were not really designed with the volume of automobile traffic that we see today, so drop-off and pickup times can be pretty tough at lots of schools. The oldest schools, such as Newport Harbor High School, where a recent accident occurred, have the worst problems. There’s not a lot that can be done to fix the fundamental road-structure issues around Newport Harbor, so they’ll have to work out some other solutions. Obviously, drivers and pedestrians both should do a better job of watching out for each other, but that’s always true.

Somewhat distressing to me in the Newport Harbor accident story in the Daily Pilot were the comments attributed to Newport Beach Mayor Don Webb and Councilman Steve Rosansky: “They encouraged the students’ activism but added that changing safety measures took time” (Raising new flags,” Wednesday). Why do basic traffic safety measures need to take a lot of time? Fixing one crosswalk with better signs, a warning light or even those cool flashing lights in the pavement isn’t exactly rocket science, nor is it cause for a long bureaucratic debate.

Now that they’ve said that, they’ve really put the city on the hook by acknowledging that there may be a safety problem and then not working quickly to fix it. If another student gets hit while the city mulls over the complex implications of erecting a new warning flasher or adding some signs, lawyers will have a field day. Webb and Rosansky seem also to be neglecting the time-honored political tradition of jumping on these easy-response items to show their constituents that they care and are on top of things. Safety does take time -- in this case, about 20 minutes should be enough to come up with something.

* MARK GLEASON is a Costa Mesa resident and parent.

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