I became a law enforcement officer in 1990 after six years of serving as an Army Reservist. It seemed like a natural next step foward in continuing my public service. It only made sense that I would parlay my experience in the military into protecting our community.
In 2016, after retiring as a Captain with the Miami Dade Schools Police Department, I decided to continue my community service in a different way. Having become terribly disenchanted by what I was seeing in Tallahassee, I felt drawn to a new calling of public service; that of an elected official. Much like Ghandi famously said, I wanted to be the change I wanted to see in the world. But it wasn’t long before I realized that this task would prove to be much more difficult than any role I’d filled over my 32-year career in the military or law enforcement.
Soldiers and officers are sworn to the common mission of protecting the public, both the country at large and our local communities. Such should be the charge of elected officials as well. Sadly, I quickly learned that those from the lowest to the highest levels of government frequently lose sight of the greater good. Instead, Tallahassee more resembles a bazaar where merchants of influence peddle their wares and haggle over price as they compete for the favor of legislators.
Nowhere is this dysfunction more apparent than in the realm of education policy. Not only do legislators, most with little to no experience in the classroom, impose burdensome and unfunded mandates on school districts, often in defiance of local control, but some have pushed, ruthlessly and relentlessly, to discredit and dismantle public education as we know it, all to the benefit of private parties and on the back of taxpayers’ dollars. This has been a meticulously orchestrated plan that has been skillfully executed over the last 20 years. The result? Dozens of ineffective, inefficient and illogical policies.
Their latest folly is to expand the Guardian Program to include arming full-time teachers in addition to other school staff. Even legislators acknowledge that there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that upping the ante and arming teachers would add one iota of additional protection against an active school shooter. No matter. Our leaders seem poised to force this idea down the throats of opposing educators and the public alike.
They have ignored the fact that all major teacher, principal, school employee, parent, and school security organizations and most Americans strongly oppose this measure. It doesn’t matter that the cost of arming and training educators would eclipse that of the funds it would take to properly staff our schools with mental health counselors and pay teachers accordingly.
It’s irrelevant that teachers are not sharp shooters or even first responders and even those of us who are effectively trained to use firearms, are often left with significant post-traumatic stress disorder after being involved in a shooting. And of course, never mind the fact that most law enforcement agencies believe this is a terrible idea.
Which begs the question, what exactly is the goal and who are our legislators serving? Clearly it’s not you or me or much less our children. And while it’s easy to become incensed at the blatant disregard for the will of the people, we only have ourselves to blame.
We have insanity in Tallahassee because we keep doing the same thing over and over again, which is voting these ineffective leaders back into office. If we want better, we have to do better. We cannot continue to sit idly by while our representatives in government push policies that are designed to dismantle our public schools and further endanger our communities. We have to demand more and we have to hold them accountable. But most importantly, we all have to be the change we want to see in the world.
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