LAST WORD 2/4/2008

the last word (tm)

Vol. 17/No. 1 - 446th issue - February 4, 2008
lastword@bunkerblast.info - http://www.bunkerblast.info - Bellevue, Kentucky
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NEWPORT SCHOOLS SUED OVER HARASSMENT

In the immortal words of Cookie Monster, me got it now: If you're a school, it's just an instinct that you'll deny student harassment ever takes place, even when it does.

Seriously, can you actually think of any time in recent years in which a school administration admitted there was severe bullying in their school? In fact, the more a school denies it, the worse it usually is. You can call it pulling a Brossart.

Now the parents of 12-year-old twin girls who were constantly harassed at Newport Middle School are suing the school district. The abuse was perpetrated by about a dozen schoolmates and included verbal harassment and hair pulling. One gang of aggressors repeatedly made the twins late for class by blocking them. After one of the girls was knocked unconscious by a group of thugs, a teacher violently yanked her by the arm. That attack left her with neck and back injuries that haven't completely healed months later.

The school was so negligent that the twins transfered to a private school. Wow, Newport Middle School must be bad! In my experience, private schools were always much worse than public schools. I know my analysis is skewed by St. Joe's and Brossart (where the school lied to the police about the problem), but in private schools in general there's less recourse.

The Newport school system has a written policy against bullying. But then again, even Bro$$art does now too. (Relax, I'll get to that one of these days.) But these policies do no good if the school doesn't enforce them.

We think someone should also complain to Northern Kentucky's Republican state senators. All of the GOPoo state senators from this area have consistently opposed a state law to require schools to have a policy against student harassment, because they think bullying is a constitutional right. (Shows you what side they're on.)

LAUGH OF THE YEAR: BROSSART EXPECTS 650 STUDENTS

If you're a new reader of The Last Word, one thing you'll quickly learn is that Bishop Brossart High School - a small Catholic school in Alexandria - is quite possibly the worst school in the world. I've fought an uphill battle versus this bullying mill for the past 21 years. The school has a sympathetic local media to cry to, but its reputation did suffer for a while.

It had about 200 students in the late '80s, faltered a bit, then benefited from new exurban development. Exurbs and school harassment feed off each other.

What the school doesn't grasp though is that the Wal-Nut culture isn't sustainable, communities don't grow infinitely, and subdivisions eventually see declining home values, especially as the foreclosure crisis expands. Along with this, cooler heads will prevail over the exurban politics of conformity and oppression.

Brossart has a bad habit of constructing new buildings that it doesn't need and expanding school property far beyond its main facilities. Kind of like when Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh took over that town in Oregon. The school buyed the city's old firehouse at an extremely cheap price, and it wants a new gym to replace the one that freshly opened in the late '80s. It's trying to buy land way over by the old city hall a half-mile away for a large outdoor athletic field. And - in addition to the new gym - the school wants classroom buildings. Gobs and gobs of new buildings.

Brossart replaces buildings faster than Las Vegas demolishes hotels. A building there is lucky if it lasts 30 years. In the '80s, preservationists fought the school's efforts to raze a building on campus that was on a state registry of historic buildings. But the school went behind their backs and bulldozed it in the middle of the night. Since then, new classrooms have sat empty.

Now a school official has told the Cincinnati Enquirer that he expects Brossart to have 650 students 10 years from now.

You know what we have to say about that? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

And you know what else? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Yeah, right. If they ever get 650 in my lifetime, I'll eat my hat - literally. I'll buy a ball cap and start chomping away!

The school's delusion is exactly like when Michael Jackson announced he would live to be 150 by living in a hyperbaric chamber. It ain't gonna happen - especially when folks find out how much the school intentionally encourages student bullying, because I'm making sure people know. That plus the fact the school aids and abets illicit relationships by letting adult males come to the school to pick up under-age female students. (The Bro$$art liars will deny that too, witnesses notwithstanding.)

Let me be blunt: Bishop Brossart High School is crazy. They're petty, they're delusional, they're greedy, they're controlling. But above all else, batshit crazy. This story just proves it even more.

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(Copywrong 2008)
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