Following the revelations about the Buffalo Public Schools by SVU Detective Richard Hy, the school board announced it was launching an independent investigation. This sounded like a good thing in the wake of still more evidence about just some of what goes on in the schools in Buffalo.
The super short version is that school administrators appear to be more worried about their reputation and statistics than they are about the children in their charge, and the truth is that this becomes even more clear the more I learn.
Now, when I heard this, I took it as a positive sign, but also with a degree of skepticism. After all, independent investigations are paid for by the people calling for one, which means that even if the investigation is thorough, anything other than a scathing report is going to look like a cover-up.
And Buffalo Public Schools knows good and well how that goes.
In February of 2022, a student stabbed a peer and shot a school security guard at McKinley High School in Buffalo.
While students had reportedly been dismissed for the day, it was still upsetting for students and parents. After all, a little while earlier and more people could have been hurt.
The Buffalo Public Schools knew they had to do something, so they launched an independent investigation.
he Buffalo school district’s board of education has approved the proposal to have an independent security contractor investigate the McKinley High School attack.
During a meeting on Wednesday night, the board unanimously approved the resolution. The goal is to better know how to keep the district, as a whole, safer.
Board President Lou Petrucci said “It’s going to take a little bit of time.”
“We have to demonstrate things,” Petrucci said. “We have to show things that are actionable. We have to show things that people can touch and see.”
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This makes sense. Having an outside entity investigate the security issues at McKinley.
However, the outcome of that investigation has yet to be released to the public, even in a redacted form that removes any suggestions for how to improve safety at the schools.
Petrucci's comments of "It's going to take a little bit of time" sound awfully familiar to me. It does so because at least one member of the current school board has told local media the same thing this time around.
Three years after the last investigation was launched, the public doesn't have any answers.
This situation can't wait another three years.
What it looks like to me, as an outside observer, is that the school board uses the "independent investigation" thing to kick the can down the road. They likely know the public has a relatively short attention span, so they announce an investigation, hire someone to do it, then sit on the report if they can't spin the results as something that shows they did everything right.
Their own history of this, on top of the plethora of other scandals that have long rocked the Buffalo Public Schools, means an outside entity needs to come in that has absolutely no obligation to play nice with the school board. This is a job for the US Department of Justice, either through the FBI or the attorney general's office. In most states, the state attorney general's office would be a viable option, too, but New York Attorney General has enough on her plate trying to defend herself from real estate fraud allegations; she's not really in a position to be trusted here.
Whoever does it, though, needs to step in and do so quickly. The kids of Buffalo deserve far better than they're getting.
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