Editorial

A bogeyman has been spotted at local schools

The current bogeyman making his way through our society was born in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999. That's when two students killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher in a hate-fueled rampage that ended with their own self-inflicted deaths. Now sitings of this bogeyman are being reported almost daily, from every nook and cranny in the United States that gets CNN.

They say this bogeyman's in Los Gatos, too. That he's scurrying around, waiting to pounce. But, actually, he's already hit and moved on. He made his cut fast and clean, a razor strike, as elusive as Elvis. The community is just beginning to experience the fallout of the bogeyman's visit. Los Gatos High School now has a cop patrolling the grounds full time. The district is forced to spend time and money, implementing "intruder drills," just in case It happens Here. Kids are being encouraged to name names--with absolute anonymity, promises one local administrator--if they suspect wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, the beneficiaries of this climate of fear are the people who inevitably enter the fray to profit from it. One Silicon Valley company is marketing a turnkey surveillance system to schools, complete with hall cameras and centralized monitoring.

You can almost hear the rising chorus of keystrokes, as writers churn out books and articles about how to prevent something like this from ever happening at your school or to your kid. Even Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that freed up $100 million in 1999, for something called the School Safety and Violence Prevention Act.

Just as the politicians, law enforcement officials have been known to create their own bogeymen. To his credit, Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Chief Larry Todd didn't play this tune. "Our schools are safer than ever," Todd said recently. The school administrators are probably already weary of fielding calls from parents with active imaginations and too much time on their hands, but they're playing the game, pretending that they, too, believe in this bogeyman.

Instead of all this posturing and wasting of time, money and resources--especially the human capital spent preparing for something that can happen despite every imaginable sort of defense--the community should do something really productive, like giving kids an opportunity to be kids. One man recently wrote a letter about how some parents had recently turned a local Easter egg hunt into a frenzied competition that left smaller kids with empty baskets.

Instead of blaming the schools, the teachers, the this and the that, parents should start spending more time listening to their kids and just being around, being available. Not necessarily doing some activity or having a soul-searching, gut-wrenching conversation, but just sitting at the dinner table and eating together. Or sharing a sunny day on the patio. Sometimes that's all it takes.

Hate and frustration tend to build incrementally and grow especially well in isolation. Only a bogeyman takes shape overnight, under the cover of darkness.

Police Report

Amy Peikoff: Robert Downey Jr. supporters only half right

Local Home and Property Sales Listings

St. Luke's Episcopal Church hosts Berkeley organist Larry Marietta for Evensong recital

Picture from the Past

Sports Briefs

Cats among best in CCS Top-8

A's off to hot start in 2001, at least in LG Little League

Recreational soccer signups