Where is school discipline

In place or lack of? Whoever you talk to their answer will be different. Take for instance in the Panther Valley School District, the bad-behavior students get picked up at their front door, but the good-behavior students, like the mail carriers through the rain, sleet or snow, must walk to their designated bus stops. What's wrong with this picture? The good students do not get rewarded but the bad students do. I don't understand. Students who get multiple write-ups most of the time are still allowed to ride the bus. This is after the driver and monitor along with a camera see what actions the student was doing.

Before the holidays, a student was misbehaving on one of the buses along with naked pictures on a cellphone, showing them to other students before any action was taken. The driver had called children and youth but do not know if they got involved. I think even the police were involved. The student was taken off the bus for a couple of days but when returned was the same way.

So what did it accomplish? Nothing! These schools like to do everything in-house so nobody knows anything. This type of student disrupts classroom students and the same on the bus. How can a student learn anything from this type of behavior? Even when the kids are going home on the bus they like to relax a little bit. They do not wish to put up with kids being out of line after putting up with this in school.

Also, Tamaqua Area School District is not much better. Forms may be filled out and given to the right people, but does anything ever get done? It turns out to be a long process. A driver had quit there because of a student. When another driver was put on the bus run along with a camera, now something was done. Again was there any change in the student? Very little.

Oh, by the way, the student at Panther Valley was an intermediate student, but at Tamaqua it was an elementary student. The high school students are usually more behaved than the others are at both schools. At the elementary level, it's even worse. Because there, if the parents know the higher-ups, they seem to just brush it off.

Now all of this is being done most of the time with the driver and monitor along with a camera on the bus. Are the parents home or concerned about their kids? Apparently not! How can a driver drive a school bus or a teacher teach in schools if there are students who are misbehaving and the school does very little to solve this problem? Don't just take my word for it, ask the teachers and also the students in school and on the bus. They'll give you the answers you don't want to know.

Bill Reed

Lansford