K-9’s, Casco Bay High and Graffiti, oh my!

POLICE DOGGIES AT PORTLAND HIGH

I see there have been some “behind the scenes” discussions on allowing police dogs to roam the halls of Portland High School looking for students that are the end-users of the drugs police are failing to prevent entering the city. An award-winning bad idea, we may as well skip the K-9‘s and go right for the promotion of the environment the dogs would create and install iron jail bars on the windows of the school.

See, when you treat a human being, which is what the kids that attend Portland High School are despite adult attempts at treating them anything but, like criminals, the result will be a student populace that will act out as such. The fault for the perceived drug problem at the Portland high schools lie not with the students who posses the drugs, but with the police department that allows the sale of said drugs on the street. Because the department has failed in that regard, the obvious scapegoat is the most vulnerable one: a person who has little recourse in a juvenile criminal system set up to ruin rather than improve the lives of kids buying the drugs that shouldn’t be here in the first place.

Allowing doggies to roam the halls not only disenfranchises end users found in possession, but also students who want nothing to do with the drug culture that are forced to, in 1939 German parlance “show their papers,” and in this instance “omit their scent.” At least with the newly installed iron jail bars in the windows, all students would know upon gazing at the building before entry that the system is one that is out to get them, whether they’re high or not.

CASCO BAY HIGH SCHOOL

In last Friday’s Daily Sun, I saw that Casco Bay High School received a glowing report from the “second best” and less expensive accreditation firm Great Schools Partnership. I have been a student at a High School going through accreditation with the high-class firm New England Association of Schools and Colleges and while the “Partnership’s” process might be more thorough, I would tend to doubt it.

At Kennebunk High School in 1994, the school was up for accreditation and needed to have a team of people come visit the school for two weeks. Teachers spent a month leading up to that time cleaning their classrooms, putting up displays that served to excite the visiting education “professionals,” and beat into the student populace that not only had we better behave, but that the visiting evaluators would be talking with a small group of random students and that it would be appreciated, if we were selected, to offer positive anecdotes about the school. Seeing as how that was going to be a stretch, we were even offered small “cheat sheets” as to what we might say. Going the extra mile the school, having removed stall doors in the rest rooms to deter smoking there, put them back on for the very special visit.

Did Casco Bay High School resort to these sorts of shenanigans to get their glowing report? It’s happened before. Is it the exemplary place of learning that was outlined in this independent report? Probably not.

GRAFFITI REDUX

Congratulations to the city council for getting the Suslovic Graffiti Law passed. It was toned down a bit, removing the language that insisted a building owner in the city submit a plan for removal of graffiti if said owner was victimized because the police department and city failed to prevent it from happening in the first place. I suppose the backlash from homeowners was a little more a council with three mayoral candidates on it could take. The amended ordinance fines homeowners only if the city has to remove the markings. I wouldn’t expect a major increase in revenue from the fine with the city in charge of removal, as they’re unable and unwilling to remove graffiti defacing city property as it is. I was a little disappointed, as I was looking forward to submitting my plan to the city if I were marked. It would have made for an entertaining read.

I would have even run it here.

(Jeffrey S. Spofford is the circulation manager for The Portland Daily Sun and can be found online at spoffordnews.com)