June 25, 2018, Gainesville (FL) Times: Hall Board of Education passes budget with emphasis on school safety https://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/hall-board-education-passes-budget-emphasis-school-safety/ With upward of $700,000 in new funding allocated for school safety improvements, the Hall County Board of Education on Monday, June 25, voted 4-1 to approve a $282 million general fund budget for the 2019 fiscal year…. Board member Brian Sloan cast the lone dissent, saying he wanted additional funding for school safety, specifically to hire additional resource officers to patrol campuses throughout Hall…. Lock said he supported the large increase in new spending to support school safety upgrades, from personnel to new alarms and monitoring equipment. The state is chipping in about $240,000 for the school district to improve security of its facilities…. Sloan said he thinks violence in schools reflects a spiritual, cultural and mental health crisis in America that is not being adequately addressed. But the school district can “only address what we can control,” board chairman Nath Morris said.
top of page
Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
bottom of page