Posted on 01/17/2013 1:39:11 AM PST by Kaslin
What do Al Hunt of Bloomberg News, David Gregory of “Meet the Press” and President Obama have in common -- besides their liberal politics?
They all send their kids to Sidwell Friends School.
With campuses in Washington, D.C. and Bethesda, Md., the highly selective private school is where the Clintons and the Gores sent their kids, along with Joe Biden’s grandchildren.
It’s also where the local 1 Percenters and the government-media elites who can afford to shell out about $32 grand a year send their children to be indoctrinated -- excuse me, educated -- and to be safe.
Unlike parents across America who are worrying about how to protect their school kids in the wake of the tragic shootings in Newtown, Conn., Sidwell parents spend their days worry-free.
Their children are better protected than the printing presses at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. And it’s not because of the heavily armed Secret Service detail posted on campus to protect first-kids Sasha and Malia Obama.
It’s because Sidwell Friends -- a Quaker school, by the way -- is defended by guards with loaded guns. In addition to the Secret Service with its Uzis and large ammo clips, Sidwell has its own security staff of 11.
I didn’t hear President Obama mention Sidwell Friends’ solution to school safety on Wednesday when he announced his sweeping plans to reduce gun violence by banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, instituting tougher gun-registration laws and taking steps to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.
None of Obama’s measures would have prevented the slaughter of innocents in Connecticut, but that’s not the point. The point is pure politics and the president and his crew want to take full advantage of the Newtown shootings to advance their anti-gun agenda.
At his White House media extravaganza, the president used lawmakers, law enforcement officials and children as his props. The kids, drawn from across the U.S., had written letters to the president saying they were worried about gun violence and school safety. You can bet there were no Sidwell kids on stage with him.
While Washington’s grandstanders and anti-gun nuts prepare to fire their latest round of ineffective, politically correct, feel-good federal laws at law-abiding gun owners, at least six states are preparing new legislation that will allow teachers to carry guns into schools or require several teachers in the building to be armed.
Putting guards with guns in places that need to be protected from bad guys or crazies is not a radical idea. It’s perfectly sensible.
Politicians and celebrities use armed bodyguards all the time. We have armed guards in banks, jewelry stores and malls. After 9/11 we armed airline pilots and armed federal marshals posing as passengers.
Only politicians and hysterical celebrity dummies like Piers Morgan can’t understand why making schools gun-free zones attracts mass-murders and reduces the chances that anyone with a gun will stop them to zero.
The president never thought of using Sidwell Friends as an example of how armed guards at schools can make them safer.
He was too busy trying to score points by attacking the NRA, dreaming up laws to further oppress law-abiding gun owners and making fun of the people who know the Second Amendment isn’t about protecting duck hunters’ rights, it’s about the right of the people to protect themselves from their government.
Meanwhile, here in Los Angeles, the Catholic grade school where my daughter teaches didn’t wait around for the president or Joe Biden to come up with complicated new laws to allegedly ensure the safety of their children.
The officials at my daughter’s school decided for themselves the best way to make their campus safer. Taking a cue from the smart folks who run the Sidwell Friends School, they did a simple, effective and rational thing. They hired an armed guard.
He tells us that a “gun-free zone” is safer for our kids, so I am SURE he just forgot to give Sidwell an executive order to get rid of the guards and the SS guys. He’ll take care of that oversight today, I bet. /s
The most dangerous place in America for a child is in its mothers womb. Second, is alone with her boyfriend.
School is the safest place in America for a child.
Here we go again.
Yes, Sidwell has security, but some folks are making it sound like an armed camp. Not so. Sidwell has two campuses, both multi-building complexes with associated gyms and athletic fields. I've never been to the lower school campus, but my daughter has played and practiced soccer at the upper school campus. It has the look and feel of a small college campus, minus the dorms. Nice school.
If security shows up at 7:00 and stays until 9 or 10 p.m. (judging from soccer excursions, the upper school campus is active until well into the evening), you're talking two shifts. So you put a person at the gate to keep stray riff-raff from wandering in, and you have someone floating about the campus. Two campuses times two shifts times two people equals eight of your eleven security slots right there. The Director of Secuity makes nine. And we've not even touched night watchman or weekend coverage.
The point is, the place is not an armed fort. Yes, it has security, just as I walk past a desk lady in a security company uniform every morning in my building. Whether Sidwell security is armed or not, I've never noticed.
I'm not waving a flag for Sidwell; I'm just reacting to some of the commmentators who are leaning a bit heavily on the eleven person security staff and making it sound like there's a SWAT team somewhere on campus.
I’d like to send Obama or any of these idiots without a weapon in a dark alley with a Trayvon walking accross their way. THey would squelch like little pieces of crap that they are.
These people are a bunch of hypocrites, and so are the ones voting for them and supporting their initiatives.
I am sick of hearing the black person who knows a plantation is a gun free zone for them getting offended when the truth is told to them: you like that plantation, it’s where you belong or what, uh? You are offended like Obama or his girl Eric Holder?
The dark ages and alleys is where they are ushering themselves and the nation. All because of girly stupid emotions which are not yet affected by the reality.
This is so sick of a vanity display of political emotions, it is incredible that no one is capable of any wit or ability to express against it in any way.
I’d like to send Obama or any of these idiots without a weapon in a dark alley with a Trayvon walking accross their way. THey would squelch like little pieces of crap that they are.
These people are a bunch of hypocrites, and so are the ones voting for them and supporting their initiatives.
I am sick of hearing the black person who knows a plantation is a gun free zone for them getting offended when the truth is told to them: you like that plantation, it’s where you belong or what, uh? You are offended like Obama or his girl Eric Holder?
The dark ages and alleys is where they are ushering themselves and the nation. All because of girly stupid emotions which are not yet affected by the reality.
This is so sick of a vanity display of political emotions, it is incredible that no one is capable of any wit or ability to express against it in any way.
And to hear leftist jews moralizing us and comforting them and themselves into this is utter bull sh!t.
Seven of the 11 on the Sidwell security staff are called “special police officers”. The others have administrative sounding titles.
It would be a safe bet that every one of those seven “special police officers” are armed at all times.
Having just one armed officer on campus would discourage a crazed shooter like Lanza.
Ultimately, it’s not about whether Sidwell does or doesn’t have a “SWAT team” on campus, it’s about pointing out the dishonesty and hypocrisy of liberals. They need to be hammered on this at every possible opportunity.
Obama’s plans have nothing to do with schools or children.
“Special police officer” might also mean the desk lady in the blue suit who signs in visitors. I’d guess most of them aren’t armed. But we’re in general agreement; security starts with an alert pair of eyes, and generally just the visible presence of said eyes will persuade undesirables to move along.
Obama deserves to be hammered every day about sending his daughterd to Sidwell, but security is a side issue. The real issue is school choice. I’ll try to post the link later — hard to switch back and forth on my phone — but DC is now spending over $29,000 per student in DCPS, once you account for all system costs. Census data. Breathtaking but true. That’s almost Sidwell tuition and is more than any of the Catholic schools in the city, even the highly selective ones (e.g. Visitation, Stone Ridge, Georgetown Prep, St. Anselm’s, etc.). But Obama stands in the door, the George Wallace of today. I like to see someone running ads on a daily basis making this point while morphing Obama’s face into Wallace’s.
If the prez kids go there then they have a rapid reaction force nearby. Try to spot the secret service guys at any political event. They blend in perfectly as they should. They not going to publish actual numbers.
... parents across America who are worrying about how to protect their school kids in the wake of the tragic shootings in Newtown...
Yeah, and I worry about my family being killed in a car accident every time I hear about one. One shooter in one classroom of the tens of thousands of schools in this country does not a trend make.
It is statistically zero. If I were a young man with young children, what would be on top of my agenda would be to ensure I can provide for their needs of my family, or them slipping in the bathtub. Now, if this explodes at least 100 fold, I would be at least a little more concerned. But that is clearly a long ways off.
So lets see - on a percentage basis, how much more security is at Sidwell than what the democrats were proposing after Newtown?
Is Sidwell, where democrat elites send their kids, more like the what Obama is proposing for public schools or like what La Pierre (NRA) was proposing?
What were the liberal elite saying about the NRA plan?
(Your nice little story about firsthand experience with Sidwell is really just apologetic fluff - without substance.)
welll.. soccer at Sidwell has it’s perks..
Yes, that’s true. One has to separate SOP at a place like Sidwell from the additional arrangements that come with presidential kids.
I’ve aways argued that democrat presidents should send their kids to a tough DC public school because the school would be made safe for them, and several hundred other kids would benefit. A place like Sidwell is already safe.
I don't know that there's been any insinuation about the level of security. As long as there's some security, people are rightfully asking, "if it's good enough for them, why not elsewhere?"
Personally, I don't think it has to be a SWAT team. It merely has to be a presence. A would-be gunman just needs to know that they could be met with resistance--a speedbump, if you will. Of course, they may choose to take their chances anyway, but perhaps the outcome will be different.
“Perks” have nothing to do with it. DC has a serious shortage of fields and gym space for non-school rec and travel play, for adults as well as kids. While this is certainly not unique to DC, in most jurisdictions around here, the school authorities work cooperatively with the community. Here, not so much. It does get frustrating to a team that is trying to be competitive to have been limited to a half a dozen outdoor practices, when weather permits, all winter long, and to then go play suburban teams that have practiced two or three times a week all winter in facilities that are available because their schools actually try to cooperate and are open to the community.
The private schools, not just Sidwell, routinely rent out their space to travel clubs (and I suppose to rec clubs if they’re willing to pay). My daughter’s team has practiced at several of them. That, and a couple of regular season games, is the only reason I’ve been on the Sidwell campus.
The issue here is security. I’m just reacting to some people who seem to think Sidwell (or other private schools, for that matter) has an unusual level of security. They don’t. They may typically have a security company rent-a-cop at the gate, and maybe someone patrolling, but I would guess that there is a much heavier police presence at the typical DC public school — though there, the focus is on inmates, not intruders.
Sheesh. Posts like yours are exactly why I thought a little background was in order. Yes, Sidwell has light security (apart from the added presence of the Secret Service due to the Obama girls). So what? There are already armed police officers in most DC public high schools, although their concern is with gangs, drugs, and assaults by students on students and teachers. Armed intruders are not the problem, except as a subset of gang and drug issues. But DC public schools are not open campuses.
Newtown has changed the threat assessment. I personally think it would be an overreaction to add armed security to every kindergarten and elementary school in America, but your mileage may differ. The light security at a place like Sidwell, I imagine, has to do primarily with the fact that it is an expansive campus with students moving between buildings, as opposed to a unitary school building where visitors sign in at the front desk. On a multi-building campus in an urban area, you want a checkpoint at the gate so strangers aren’t wandering the grounds.
As for Sidwell as a bastion of the liberal elite: Sidwell is an outstanding school by anyone’s measure, with a price tag to match. We know several Sidwell families through church and soccer. They are not all democrats and the ones we know are not wealthy. They are upper middle class, dual income folks who are making a serious financial sacrifice to buy up in their kids schooling. We are in the Catholic system which is a little less expensive, but it’s still stiff. I think of it as just having started paying college tuition a few years early.
NY wanted cops and firemen to live in the hoods they were supposed to protect. It never gained any traction.
Why am I not surprised?
I don’t know what the current rules are, but DC has made similar efforts over the years. I’ve not seen statistics, but I occasionally do see police cars parked (clearly for the night) in some borderline neighborhoods. So clearly at least a few DC police officers lend a presence after hours.
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