For shame

You know, it's really a shame what's going on in the schools these days. People are out of control with their arrogance, their misbehavior, their constant flouting of the rules and the laws, and I really have little hope for the future unless someone somewhere steps up and puts a very fast halt on this conduct.

Now would be the time for me to tell you, I am not talking about the students or the teachers. Kids are what kids are and always have been and always will be. Teachers do their best, and succeed admirably, especially in light of the fact that a person with degrees after their name could make better coin as a district manager for Cracker Barrel or a home visitation speech therapist.

The teachers are there trying to teach, and once the students file into the class in their time-honored desultory fashion, they get taught. 

And sometimes they get taught too much, as in the case of the Stemmers Run Middle School in eastern Baltimore County, where the kids pounded the pavements and the parking lots and wore out a lot of sneaker rubber selling that World's Finest Chocolate as a school fund raiser. 

It must have been bittersweet chocolate. The treasurer for the parent teacher student association, James Michael Harris, 46, has pleaded guilty to ripping off $29,000 of the candy money.

Baltimore County prosecutors says that from April 2022 to March 2023, Harris drained the school's non-profit bank account. They say he used PayPal to line his own pockets, eventually using the money to gamble on sports.

“Those kids worked so hard to raise that money and they got nothing for it in return,” says Rosemary Roos-Whitney, president of the PTSA.  “It’s really disappointing.”

Harris could get 10 years in prison, but you know how that works. These guys always wriggle off somehow. 

Gambling is a sucker's game, anyway. In all of recorded history, there has only been one man stupid enough to go bust in his own casino. Except for that orange exception, the people on the other side of the gambling table are more than happy to take your money as you dream of cleaning up on betting that the Steelers will win and the Seahawks will cover the spread.

Meanwhile, the kids are the losers. People like this man should be shunned, as they do in Amish Country.  And then send him to the hoosegow and try to explain to the kids that all their work and hustle was for naught. 

Being young, the kids will likely forgive more readily than I will.

 

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