Up North Progressive

One of the unfortunate realities of attending school in the United States is putting the burden of protecting children from threats of violence while they attend school on everyone but the people responsible. Any instance of any person claiming they want to shoot up a school or bomb a school must be taken as a credible threat, even if they never intended to do so. Schools prepare for violent acts by holding lockdown drills, notifying the authorities of threats, and keeping parents informed of what’s happening. To not go through these steps anymore is criminal negligence.

But that’s not The CSA Way.

Since September 19, 2019, CSA students and teachers of Charyl Stockwell Preparatory Academy have been terrified as messages scratched into the walls of the bathrooms at the school appeared promising violence on October 2, 2019. The threats included statements that the school would be shot up on October 2nd and it would really happen. CSPA’s method of dealing with the threat was to paint over the scratched messages and keep quiet about it.

The physical messages may be blurred beyond recognition, but the school administrators were unable to erase the images from the minds of the students.

Once the information finally came to the attention of parents, they did what any parent would do in this situation: Took matters into their own hands and got to the bottom of it.

October 2, 2019, is “Count Day” in Michigan. This is one of two days during the school year no school administrator or their office staff wants students to be absent. The number of students in your school that day is how the state of Michigan allocates the funds you need to operate the school and educate students for the school year. Real public school districts are required to spend it all on educating students. For-profit charter schools can spend significantly less and still try to get away with calling themselves a public school.

What this means is for weeks someone has threatened CSA with violence on the day Michigan schools have the highest attendance of the year and the school refused to inform parents what was happening and covered up evidence of the threats so the police had nothing to assess the credibility of the threat.

Parents are furious, especially when they discovered CSPA tried to cover up the threats for weeks. Now Count Day is here, parents refuse to send their kids to school, and the Brighton Police Department only agreed to have police on campus on Wednesday after the uproar from parents would not be silenced.

And parents should never be silenced when it comes to the safety of their children or kept in the dark on any aspect of Charyl Stockwell Academy. Informing parents of threats made to the school is not the only thing CSA likes to keep the public in the dark about.

October 2, 2019, is the last day in Michigan you can enroll your children into a school that will treat shooting threats to your school seriously as a credible threat and keeps you informed of what is happening. Also, Chuck Stockwell won’t get your children’s per-pupil tuition grant.