SCHOOLS: Parents, need your help

North Idaho is a special place and her peoples are special! We say this is a great place, because we have traveled and worked in different places on this Earth; but North Idaho is our home.

The youth of this community are great. As individuals, you meet them as baggers in the local grocery stores; they serve you in the restaurants and they hold the doors open for you in public. They are very informative, if you ask them questions.

Regarding the problem with bullying (Press — “Battling bullying,” March 18) in our local schools, there is the allied and related problem of daily disrespect and disruptions in our high school classrooms — particularly, in non-Advanced Placement classes.

Teachers should have the right to teach, and students should have the right to learn. Parents teach respect for others at home. We have been raising children for about 50 years — yes, it is not easy at times! If we do not teach our children right from wrong, disaster soon waits — we have family who narrowly missed the “Columbine Tragedy,” Colorado (1999). Three bullies that I have tracked since high school (1957-58) died early.

It takes years for most youth to mature and attain full brain-cell development. The main causes of death in the first 10 years after graduating from high school are from car accidents, alcohol and drugs.

If only 20 percent or 30 percent more of our parents took a more active role in their youth’s studies and behaviors by weekly checking computer program “Skyward Family Access,” visiting classrooms and asking their youth about the classroom, it would be helpful.

School officials need to have courage and consider expelling documented troublemakers who have tormented their classes from at least middle school to high school. Even the constant bully/troublemaker deserves the right to a wake-up-call (expulsion?). Superintendents of schools should stop fearing loss of revenues and litigations. If superintendents and their principals lack courage, they become enablers and co-dependents in repeated criminal behaviors against students and teachers.

Our own nephew was followed by the same tormentors from elementary school through middle school and on into high school — he got peace when he switched high schools. In-school suspensions for two days or hiring more vice principals for discipline, or “articulating” failed philosophies, is not enough.

I have been helped by the realization that we are all distant cousins of one another. We have to work together for the good of our youth and families.

JIM PEARL

Hayden Lake