The Muskegon County (Michigan) school district, along with local fire and rescue agencies, implemented their new emergency response plan this week:
Terrorists will strike a busload of students in the Whitehall area on Tuesday [September 21], killing more than a half-dozen and sending dozens more to hospitals. It's not a crystal ball that allows such a disaster to be foreseen. It's all in the plans -- disaster preparedness plans, that is.
The disaster won't be real, but it will look real, and the participants -- including students, emergency room personnel and firefighters -- will act as if it's real.
The exercise, one that is becoming familiar in the post 9/11 era, is part of attempts by emergency responders and Muskegon County school districts to prepare for the worst. The exercise, which will involve the aftermath of a supposed explosion on a school bus at 9:30 a.m. at Durham and Holton-Whitehall roads in Whitehall Township, is being funded by homeland security grants awarded to several area school districts and Muskegon County.
Local school district transportation directors instigated the exercise because they wanted to test their abilities to respond to emergencies, said Tom Spoelman, transportation consultant for the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District.
Sounds good, right? Nothing like a drill to make sure all the agencies are prepared, right? Sure - but there's the one little issue of the fictional terrorist group that the school invented for the purpose of the drill:
The exercise will simulate an attack by a fictitious radical group called Wackos Against Schools and Education who believe everyone should be homeschooled. Under the scenario, a bomb is placed on the bus and is detonated while the bus is traveling on Durham, causing the bus to land on its side and fill with smoke.
Emphasis mine. I realize this is not one of the more important elements of the exercise, and the school district should be commended for undertaking such a drill (which seems like it was a useful exercise). But I can't help but think that the fake terrorist group was designed to be one to which, they assumed, no one would take offense (which means any particular religion, sex, or political party was out). They were searching for a group they assumed no one would defend.
So they made up a group of radical homeschoolers who care enough about their kids to homeschool them - but are willing to threaten the lives of kids who attend public schools. Sheesh. I'm sure the Muskegon County school district officials aren't offended by that - but the Devoted Reader who sent this my way sure was. And so was his homeschooled daughter.
And so is Michelle Malkin, who has a roundup of links that includes a homeschooling blogger who received an "apology" from the school, lists of angry emails sent to the school district, and the statements from two Muskegon school officials:
As educators, we believe that the first and most important teacher is the parent, whether in home schools, public schools, or non-public schools. We all work together to ensure a safe and secure environment for our children to live and grow.
We sincerely regret offending home school educators. We believe that all parents are educators and do important work at home with their children.
In this day and age of political correctness, it is probably true that the school district could not have named any group without creating a firestorm (including, sad to say, white supremacists or Islamic terrorists, both of whom have attacked American citizens in the past). But in that case, why define the group at all? The focus was, as it should have been, on the rescue mission itself; the school could have given the fictional terrorist group a meaningless acronym for a name, and left it at that.
I guess I should just be thankful they didn't go the Columbine-mythology route and assemble a group of fictional, organized, murderous goths.
Posted by kswygert at September 23, 2004 06:57 AM