Today we received a message from a concerned parent in Crete to see if we could help spread the word about what’s going on with Crete Public Schools and invite people to their school board meeting Monday at 6:00pm. Crete Public Schools has silently passed and implemented a drug screen policy for MIDDLE SCHOOLERS and high schoolers who 1) want to participate in ANY sports or activities in school and 2) want to park in the school’s parking lot. They plan to do this daily with a “lottery system” making it “random” but they also have the clause of “or if suspected drug use is occurring” … which we all know what that means. It is worth noting that 63% of Crete High School is Latino. This is an immigration check: if your kid gets busted for drugs at school, CPS, the local police, and ICE are all over your family.
This policy is the school to prison pipeline and we have a LOT of questions.
How do they even have money for that? Why are they wasting valuable, scarce educational dollars on testing middle school children for drugs? What company has been hired to do all this testing? Who on the school board is connected to them? Where will the data be stored? Who has access to it?
If you are one of those parents thinking, “My kid doesn’t do drugs, why should I care?”, we need you to understand that we are ALL harmed by police and surveillance culture. This policy will disproportionately affect kids of color, giving white parents a clear path to not give a shit because they don’t think their kids will be harmed, but this policy harms everyone whether you think it will affect your kid or not. That the school board is rolling this out as a surprise two days before school starts says a lot. There is absolutely NO parental consent involved – the only way to opt a child out of this is to forbid them from any extracurricular activity AND forbid them from using their state issued driver’s license on school grounds. And it’s too late for parents to move their kid to another school or they can’t participate in their activities either.
We are quickly losing the distinction between schools and prisons. Switch out kids for adult men and increase the number of men on the teaching/guard/counselor staff and it’s looking pretty similar.
The school board meeting is 6:00pm on Monday August 14 at the Cardinal Welcome Center at 930 Main Ave in Crete. Each person is able to give three minutes of public comment. Schools don’t start until Wednesday in Crete so there is still time to ensure they reverse course on this horrific government overreach.
If you can’t make it to the meeting on Monday, you can contact the board members here:
Justin Kuntz – Board President – 402-826-5855 – email: justin.kuntz@creteschools.org
Bill Lorenz – Board Vice President – 402-826-5855 – email: bill.lorenz@creteschools.org
Greg Hollman – Board Member – 402-826-5855 – email: greg.hollman@creteschools.org
Greg Mach – Board Member – 402-826-5855 – email: greg.mach@creteschools.org
Scott Piening – Board Member – 402-826-5855 – email: scott.piening@creteschools.org
