AUGUSTi10,i2018,iKEIZERTIMES,iPAGEiA5
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
School security and safety
Safety and security in Salem-
Keizer schools has been in the news
recently due to a proposed police
force for the schools. Due to public
outcry that proposal has been pulled
from consideration.
The safety of students is always
in front of mind for parents who
trust public schools to
keep their children se-
cure while being edu-
cated. That’s under-
standable due to the
numerous shootings at
schools across the coun-
try this year alone.
Responses to the pro-
posed police force were
swift and generally nega-
tive. Many felt a police force would
focus on students of color or stu-
dents from low-income households.
One could conclude that that feel-
ing is based on real-world experi-
ence. The security of students cuts
both ways—they need to be safe
from outside attacks and be safe
from an overzealous police force.
A Survey Monkey survey was
posted on Facebook recently. One
question asked if the respondents
supported additional school re-
source offi cers and/or armed securi-
ty in our schools; the other question
was what level of fi nancial backing
they would support, if any. More
than 400 responses had logged by
the deadline, an overwhelming ma-
jority were Keizer residents.
The implied question is whether
the public would support security
posted at every school (presumably
in Keizer) including the elementary
schools. Keeping students safe at our
elementary schools is as important as
for those students at our middle and
high schools. Our newer schools
were designed to make it impossible
to enter the school without an em-
ployee buzzing a visitor in through
the security door. That system is
only as good as the training of the
staff to never let their guard down.
A visitor does not have to ring
a bell to be allowed into McNary
High School. The offi ce
is 100 feet and the sight-
line to the main entrance
is not clear. There are a
number of entrances to all
of our schools and it is not
hard to imagine someone
on the inside opening a
side door.
Added security in all
our schools would ease the
minds of parents of students of any
grade level. Before bloating budgets
by adding security forces the school
district should ensure that all staff
is trained in threat recognition and
procedures for allowing outsiders
into the school building. Some of
the money from the recently voted-
passed school bond will go to re-
confi guring some schools front of-
fi ces for greater security.
The fear that a police force in
the schools is not a positive move
for students of color nor any stu-
dent that is different cannot be dis-
counted. We must be understanding
of the experience of all our students.
We can make all students feel safe if
we take the time to discover what
would make them feel secure be-
sides a locked front entrance.
Instead of a police force let us
move toward an inclusive school
system that values every student
coupled with better oversight about
who gets into our schools.
—LAZ
our
opinion
To the dog
owners of
Keizer
letters
To the Editor:
I am an avid dog walker
who has spent time, ener-
gy and money to train my
dog. We enjoy evening walks and love
looking at the different houses and
subdivisions of Keizer. In the year and
a half since I got my dog, I have been
charged at by more than 10 different
dogs of various breed in different lo-
cations in northeast Keizer. Some of
these instances have been more than
one dog at a time. The most recent
incident was at the Keizer Terrace
Apartments on Sunday, Aug. 5.
We are charged at by dogs whose
owners cannot hold their dog and the
dog is dragging a leash as it runs at
me, or the owner did not have their
dog on a leash nor did they have vocal
control of the dog, and it charges us
from their private property.
Most times, I pick up my 45 pound
dog and hold her in the air, leaving
myself exposed to the dog jumping on
me. I yell loudly at the charging ani-
mal—No! Back! Down!—and usually
that scares them a little so the owner
can run up and grab their
dog. Some owners apolo-
gize, some grab their dog
and walk away without
speaking, one actually told
both his dogs that were
jumping on me that, “Not
everyone wants to be their
friends.” He didn’t apolo-
gize.
The fear my dog and I experience
at these occurrences is something I
don’t wish on anyone else. It is ter-
rifying and has made it diffi cult for
my dog to discern a good dog from a
bad dog. It actually changed the way
she greets other animals. She is very
hesitant in meeting other dogs and she
used to be happy and excited.
To this end, I am begging the citi-
zens of Keizer: train your dog, leash your
dog, control your dog!
If they are attacking me, they will
attack others. I never want to harm an
animal but in order to protect myself
and my dog, I will begin defending us
using a stick or pepper spray. We have
been lucky that neither of us have
been bitten during these attacks. I feel
that luck running out.
Lillian Weaver
Keizer
Foster kids need you to care
By CASEY CHAFFIN
The foster care system is like the
youth it governs: perceived as broken,
but really just in need of love and sup-
port and better adults.
This is what I’ve learned over the
past several weeks reporting on a series
about foster care in Marion
County. I’ve interviewed
people within the Depart-
ment of Human Services,
current and former fos-
ter youth, foster parents,
a senator who worked on
care legislation, members
of third-party agencies, and
an advocacy group.
I’ve interviewed stake-
holders at all different levels of the sys-
tem, and their message for you, reader,
is this: They need you to care. They
need you to care about these young
people and what happens to them.
I believe learning to care begins
with looking into the eyes of indi-
viduals. It’s easy to read a headline
about the foster care system and brush
it off. What is that? That’s not a per-
son—it’s a complex bureaucratic or-
ganism. There’s no life in that, there’s
no humanity in that. So, we need to
go deeper—don’t ask what is happen-
ing, but who is being affected? That’s a
more interesting question. One of the
most impactful conversations in my
reporting was with a young woman
who just aged out of foster care. Her
name is Raven, and her story is the
one I’d been anticipating and dreading
since I began writing the series.
Raven was abused in her biological
home. After being removed at 8 years
old, she was abused in several foster
homes. She moved around too many
times to count. She ended up sepa-
rated from her siblings.
She struggled with de-
pression, bulimia, anxi-
ety. For a while, she was
homeless.
There’s more to that
story. But no amount of
ink will ever make you
understand how it feels
to carry her pain. The
point is: The system
failed her.
But it didn’t break her.
Four years ago, Raven began work-
ing with Oregon Foster Youth Con-
nection. She helped create, lobby, and
pass the Foster Sibling Bill of Rights
in 2017. Watching the governor sign
that bill into law is “one of the proud-
est moments of my life aside from
graduating high school,” she told me.
She’s starting online classes at Cheme-
keta Community College in the fall
with the intention of becoming an el-
ementary school teacher. Initially, she
just wanted to work with foster kids,
but then she was hired to work for a
YMCA summer program. And she re-
alized she can be the better adult in
any child’s life. “I want to make that
impact with everybody and have a
casey
chaffiin
WheatlandiPublishingiCorp.
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EDITOR & PUBLISHER
LyndoniZaitz
publisher@keizertimes.com
facebook.com/keizertimes
twitter.com/keizertimes
(CaseyiChaffiin,iaistudentiatiSokai
University,i isi ani interni ati thei Keizer-
times.)i
Manafort, Gates display worst of excess
As many in the nation have be-
come transfi xed with the Paul
Manafort trial, another name associ-
ated with President Donald J. Trump,
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin,
the cabinet member who used fed-
eral government aircraft to transport,
entertain and impress his recently-
wed bride, has informed
us that he and his boss are
advocating for an addi-
tional $100 billion tax cut
for the same recipients of
the recent Trump admin-
istration tax cut.
Those with a measure
of insight to what’s go-
ing on to rob America’s
other 99 percent see the
two events, the Manafort trial and
the recent—and now newly pro-
posed—tax cut as another cut from
the U.S. fl ag as metaphor. As the
reader may already know, Manafort
had grown super rich by taking pub-
lic money while Mnuchin now seeks
a legal version of what got Manafort
into the crosshairs of special counsel
leader, Robert Mueller.
In the latest version of what’s be-
come an 18-month grab of anything
not nailed down in Washington,
D.C., this proposed cut would be
brought about through what’s called
executive fi at or an action without a
vote of Congress. It’s not only high-
ly unusual but also contrary to the
actions of anything known done by
any democracy and would fall into
the category of plundering the U.S.
treasury while led by the guy given
the assignment to protect it. Mostly,
it will enrich the U.S. elites as well as
Mnuchin, Trump and other wealthy
Trump cabinet members.
What’s really going on should be a
warning to all of us, even those who
will benefi t from it, because it seri-
ously threatens our nation as a con-
stitutional government based on the
rule of law and U.S. sovereignty. It
even has a name, that is, kleptocracy.
For those without a handy diction-
ary, kleptocracy refers to a ruler who
uses his political power to steal his
country’s resources.
Interesting to note that we of-
ten hold the view of ourselves as a
people who do not abide the sort of
nepotism and outright theft so com-
mon in other countries, including,
for example, Brazil. Another gen-
eralization we Ameri-
cans hold dear has been
that our practice in good
government would be
duplicated
elsewhere.
However, increasingly,
shamefully and destruc-
tively, we have become a
sanctuary for laundered
money, shell companies
and underhanded real es-
tate deals. Wealthy Americans plant
their money offshore in 2018 and
have done so for a couple of decades,
just like their crooked counterparts
in bottom-feeding nations that we
Americans commonly view as dis-
gusting and despicable.
Manafort is one of those Ameri-
cans who has lead the way into the
world of dark, shady and illegal deal-
making. He works well with thugs
and despots at stealing from their cit-
izens and then hiding their plunders.
Manafort helped sanitize Philippine
gene
h.
mcintyre
Keizertimes
relationship with those kids, so they
know that they are important,” she
told me. “Because they are our next
generation, so we have to raise them
up and teach them well.”
Raise them up and teach them well.
That’s what we need to do. And that’s
not someone else’s responsibility, that
is our responsibility as a community.
An Oregonian headline published
on August 1 reads: “Oregon anger
management counselor, son accused
of abusing foster children.” The details
are familiar. The abuse took place over
a period of time, and the appropriate
offi cials didn’t catch it until recently.
The comments from angry readers
were predictable. Horrible monsters,
how could this happen, the Depart-
ment of Human Services (DHS)and
Governor Brown fail children yet
again.
The outrage is both understandable
and necessary. But it’s not enough.
We see these headlines, pound out
a caps-lock comment. And then we
move on with our lives.
We can’t do that anymore. These
kids need better, right now.
You don’t have to foster a child.
But you can ask yourself: Can you be
the better adult?
Yes. We all can.
Now, let’s do it.
Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, An-
gola’s Jonas Savimbi, the Congo’s
Mobuto Sese Seko, and Kenya’s Dan-
iel Moi. These crooks by Manafort’s
means were able to receive arms and
aid from the U.S. And, by the way,
he’s helped Russian oligarchs who,
along with Vladimir Putin, are busy
trying to undermine America.
The tales of betrayals are forebod-
ing for Americans as the Manafort
and Mnuchin stories are just two of
the many underway with a Trump
administration where foreign coun-
tries are fi nancing deals that profi t
the president’s own family along with
the bank accounts of his entire reti-
nue, most poignantly of late by the
shenanigans of Tom Price and Scott
Pruitt. There’s an American elite
who are active just like Manafort and
others who, for personal gain and
riches, send us into the toxic gasp
of international kleptocracy. The
Trump administration is the most
wildly corrupt ever while the Re-
publicans in House and Senate do
nothing about it. Currently, the only
hope for corrections and a U.S. res-
cue reside in the special counsel.
(Genei H.i McIntyrei sharesi hisii
opinioni everyi weeki ini thei Keizer-
times.)