We'll get to
the story in a moment, but first I want to take the time to explain why I'm writing this, instead of Trench.
It's been a few years since high school for me, but my entire high school experience could be summed up with the phrase "charlie foxtrot". It was a wide variety of things, but we're only going to deal with one part of it today - the school board, funding, etc.
I live in southern Wisconsin, I've lived here since the third grade. The school board here will tell you, your family, your friends, random strangers, pet chickens, etc., how our town's education system is the
best around - not just the state, but probably one of the best in the nation.
Bullshit. Oh my gods, the bullshit.
As I mentioned above, I moved here in the third grade. I'd gone to first and second grade in a public school in Illinois. Not a private school, no tutoring, no home schooling, nothing like that. I was more than two years ahead of my entire class. I literally sat and twiddled my thumbs until the middle of the fifth grade. There was nothing they were teaching that I hadn't already learned, with the exception of a few classes that taught local/state history. This is a school system that, for
high school spelling, had lists with words like "school" and "stone" - I shit you not. You do
not get an education in this town - not at all.
A large part of the problem with the public schools here - at least when I was in the system - was outdated teaching materials. For example, in high school, our Algebra textbooks were from the early 60's and quite literally falling apart. It wasn't unusual for people to have to partner up on specific pages because their particular book was all but destroyed (faded, scrawled over, ripped up, etc) in the section we'd be on for the day.
And yet, the football team got brand new uniforms, paid for by the school, every year, and new equipment as often as they needed it.
The high school football team here is apparently the town's pride and joy. They win. A lot. Going back a long time, too. It's become so important to the school board that the football team is where all the money for education goes. And it gets better - the football coach/gym teacher, who over a couple of decades had
hundreds of complaints against him for verbal and physical abuse of students, parents of students, and even other teachers, got a free pass as long as the football team kept winning.
(If that shocks you, keep in mind that, after I was out of school, there was an incident at the junior high where several students beat an autistic student so badly he spent a few days in the hospital, all the while two teachers watched and one of them joked about it. They were never even disciplined.)
Which brings me, roughly, to
the story:
A high school football coach who had been suspended after allowing two players to appear in a game while serving jail time has been reinstated.
The players were arrested in July on felony home invasion charges. Each pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 90 days in the Genesee County Jail.
Yes, that's right. Two high school students commit home invasion, a typically violent crime, and their punishment is to spend their nights playing football for the school team. And better yet, the coach that lets them gets a slap on the wrist, at best. Is this a national phenomenon?
Justice really
is blind. Probably gagged, too.