‘We’re supposed to protect kids here’ …

… but from the police?

The best news reporter in town is up with a story today that ought to get heads rolling in our public school district — but probably won’t because — Forget it, Jake, it’s Madison WI!

School employees harassed police as they arrested an 18-year-old student criminal for carrying a loaded weapon inside La Follette high school, according to the most excellent report from Chris Rickert of the WI State Journal, made after an open records request.

One Kyshawn M. Bankston had a Glock 9 mm handgun, two magazines with rounds in them, a scale and an empty plastic bag that had contained marijuana, police say. The young scholar lunged for that gun as police moved to arrest him. (Their police report)

That exercise in public safety troubled a school employee who became “erratic and upset” — not for the incipient threat to students and staff represented by the armed teenager — but at police for making the arrest. (!!!) The school employee is a so-called safety officer — unarmed and not sworn as a police officer. Madison expelled actual police from its schools four years ago. Rationale: they make kids feel unsafe! (We’ll pause here while you roll that over in your mind.)

 Kids these days!

What the school district enabler meant to say, apparently, is they’re in the schools to protect young punks, if members of favored demographics. Bankston was still in school or back in school (we can’t say fershur if it was him because of student records confidentiality!) after stealing a backpack from a former student in the La Follette parking lot earlier in the school year, beating her when she resisted, then using her debit card to buy designer gym shoes and junk food. Police dropped the investigation when the victim refused to press charges.

As police led Bankston away after the May 7 gun arrest, the in-security assistant whined to the beleaguered principal, “We’re supposed to protect kids here. This is the second time you’ve done this to [Bankston].”

The first time, it would seem, was two years ago, when Bankston was 16 and therefore, a minor shielded from public scrutiny. A Glock .45-caliber handgun was pulled off the youngster in May 2022. At that time, two La Follette staffers told police they were his “legal guardians” — one of them harassing police all the way to the downtown cop shop.

La Follette Principal Mat (one T) Thompson e-mailed parents that “possessing a handgun on campus is a crime and results in an automatic recommendation for expulsion.” (Not automatic expulsion: automatic “recommendation.”) Fortunately, a court order now bans Bankston from the school. Does this mean he won’t graduate Monday 06-10-24! Someone, notify Freedom Inc.! STAT!

Police nabbed Bankston incidentally only after going to the school to investigate other students in an armed robbery of vaping pens.

 Meanwhile, at Southside elementary school

The parent complaint alleges high levels of unsafe and disruptive behaviors at the school, both physical and psychological. They say physical fights and bullying among student are common, with no adult intervention. — ‘Parents seek to remove leaders‘

At a K-6 school! And the school district wants to ask for more spending?

Blaska’s Bottom Line: What did Mike Dukakis say? A fish rots from the head. (Send help! We’re quoting Dukakis!) Too early to blame the new school district superintendent but this school board has been Woke since eight-track tapes. The mayor, the council, the WI State Journal, the chamber of commerce, the city’s legislative delegation, Police Chief Shon Barnes, the Lions Club, and the Ladies Sodality of St. Maria Goretti Church ought to demand a summit meeting to demand a thorough about-face on the schools’ insistance on race-based victimhood instruction. And the resignations of the Madison school board.

Would renaming more schools help?!