Pinellas School Board chairwoman under fire for calling disruptive students 'hoodlums'

Pinellas School Board chairwoman Janet Clark is coming under fire for using the term "hoodlums" to describe a small group of chronically disruptive students in county schools.

Board members Mary Brown and Linda Lerner criticized Clark at Tuesday night's board meeting. And now Ray Tampa, president of the St. Petersburg branch of the NAACP, said Clark's refusal to apologize has made things worse.

The International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement — better known as the Uhurus — called for Clark to resign for the statement, which it viewed as racist. Clark is white. Tampa said he thought the comment was inappropriate, but not racist.

Tampa said he was considering filing a complaint against Clark, who has a teaching certificate, with the Florida Department of Education's Office of Professional Practices, which handles complaints against teachers.

"The (teacher) code of ethics says you can't embarrass kids or make disparaging remarks about kids," he said.

Clark made the comment at a board workshop last week in a wide-ranging discussion about chronically disruptive students at John Hopkins Middle School and other Pinellas schools.

"So much time is taken up with addressing hoodlums, with kids who don't want to be in school," she said. She also said, "We are talking about a small number of children."

"They might be disruptive. They might be in gangs. They might be many things, but they are not hoodlums," Brown said. "I feel that that statement showed insensitivity to our children, and it certainly did not offer good guidance to our staff."

"There are people upset out there about the comment, different kinds of people, including employees," Lerner said. "We have to be careful as board members when we speak."

Before the meeting, Clark said the statement had nothing to do with race. "I made no mention of race," she said. "There are hoodlums of all races and colors and ethnic backgrounds."

But Clark may have stepped into a situation where the same word conjures up different images, depending on who hears it.

It does not appear the origins of the word "hoodlum" have any ties to race or ethnicity. It is an adaptation of a German word that meant "ragamuffin" or "good for nothing," said Michael Adams, an associate professor of English at Indiana University and author of the 2009 book, Slang: The People's Poetry.

But the meanings of words can change, Adams said. Over time, "hoodlum" may have become a more racially identifiable word, in part because of the slang term "hood," short for neighborhood, and also because hood and hoodlum began to be applied to African-American youths by white people, he said.

"Hoodlum, when you look it up in the dictionary, doesn't look so bad," Adams said. But when people in the black community hear it, "they associate it with words and meanings other than (those from) 1871 or whenever it was the word first appeared in print."

The professor said the case reminds him of the uproar from a 1999 incident when a Washington D.C., city official used the term "niggardly" to describe how he was managing budget cuts. It means "miserly," but another employee took it as a racial slur.

Said Adams: "What people hear always means something more than what a word may mean historically."

At Tuesday's meeting, Clark told board members that she knew people were upset, but would not apologize.

"We can't continue making excuses when children don't behave and disrupt the educational environment for teachers and students," she said. "That's all I can say on that matter."

The next day, the Uhurus staged a small demonstration in St. Petersburg. Eight protesters stood in front of John Hopkins and chanted as classes let out Wednesday.

They took aim at Clark, the school district and St. Petersburg police, who have arrested 84 John Hopkins students this school year — the most arrests by far in any city middle school.

The group's president, Chimurenga Waller, said he blames the school's troubles on the adults who run the school system, not the children who go there. "We don't have a John Hopkins crisis," he said. "We have a systematic crisis."

Asked how he would describe the unruly students blamed for the daily fights and misconduct that has plagued John Hopkins this year, Waller declined to answer.

Billie Blackshear, 64, whose nephew attends John Hopkins, said Clark's word choice was impolite — but not inaccurate.

"At the time I thought it was wrong," he said. "But it describes the kids who are doing this kind of stuff."

The real victims are the unfortunate whites caught in this. They are always in danger and their educations suffer.

There are schools in this nation that are so horrible it would be better for a child to NEVER attend. It would be better for the child to be illiterate and innumerate than to ever step foot in that environment. ( I **seriously** mean it!)

Illiteracy and innumeracy can be corrected at an adult. A crushed spirit most often can't be.

After all, according to official figures some 85 percent of them graduate. It would be instructive to know how many of those scraped by with barely a C- record. They go from grade to grade and they finally get their diplomas

Any teacher who seems so sweet and loves her cat who knows about this, and keeps silent to the parents and child and agrees to accept a paycheck for aiding and abetting this IS A LIAR!

Any teacher who seems so sweet and loves her cat and accepts these children into their classroom, and the principal who seems so upstanding and awards a diploma to one of these children IS A LIAR!!!

Therefore...Your neighbor, your relative, your friend, your church member who is a government teacher and seems so **nice** and loves her/his cat,...is likely a LIAR!!!

It is time to call it what it is. They are also THIEVES as well for taking a paycheck for LYING!!!

There was a lot of promiscuous sex among my students and this led to violence.

Is this the wonderful socialization homeschoolers are missing? ( Just wondering.)

Aside from the police officers constantly on campus, security guards are everywhere in black schools—we had one on every hall. They also sat in on unruly classes and escorted students to the office

And...I bet none of these police were counted on the school accounting record as being a school expense. Government school accounting practices would make an Enron accountant blush! For instance, in my state retired school employees are **not** considered a school expense. They are listed under retired state employees.

Whatever the state says it costs to educate a government schooled child, DOUBLE IT ! That is likely the true cost.

There they were in an integrationist’s fantasy—in the same classroom with white students, eating the same lunch, using the same bathrooms, listening to the same teachers—and yet the blacks fail while the whites pass.

Almost all realize that blacks do not respond to traditional white instruction.

Little learning happens at any government school ( good or bad). If you know of an academically successful child, the **real** learning is happening AT HOME! It is the parents and the child himself who are doing the hard work at home! Some call it "afterschooling."

So?...Why would any rational person think that government schools ( that are essentially sending home a curriculum for functional parents and children to follow) would help these black kids? It is utter idiocy! These kids need boarding schools or KIPP schools. George Will calls them paternalistic schools. But that would be racist.

Government school teachers are principals are LIARS ( we **know** that) so why would they ever tell the truth about what these black kids really need?

In our modern, atomized world children often have very little communication with adults—especially, or even, with their parents—so there is potential for a real transaction between pupil and teacher, disciple and master.

Socialization and interaction with adults in the family, children of all ages, and the outside world is one of the most important reasons to homeschool!

Many Marxist oriented teachers ( I refuse to call them liberals) abuse this "master" status.

I have been in parent-teacher conferences that broke my heart: the child pleading with his parents to take him out of school; the parents convinced their child’s fears are groundless. If you love your child, show her you care— not by giving her fancy vacations or a car, but making her innocent years safe and happy.

If you love your child homeschool.

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