Speaking of Bombs...

There have been TWO bomb threats in the past TWO weeks at the local high school. Isaac's elementary school is attached to the high school, so the threats resulted in all children being evacuated. The younger kids walked across the street to the nursing home, and the high schoolers had to sit on cold buses for three hours with no coats. (For those of you who live in warm parts of the country, it has been near zero degrees farenheit here for the past few weeks.)

The administration is MAD. Their budget is already tight, and these incidents require lots 'o cash to resolve. In a small community like this, it's not something we can afford to spend money on. The art department resorted to selling ice cream during lunch as a means of raising cash (I know the teacher is buying supplies out of her own pocket - a fact that is very common around here.) I have heard that one of the neighboring towns has had four bomb threats so far this year at their school. If each of these incidents costs $5000, that adds up to a huge chunk of the budget.

I wonder if the number of bomb threats/school violence incidents goes up when our nation is at war. Every day, we are bombarded with images of war, warned of the risk of terrorism, and told that violence is the way to safety and freedom. What kind of message does that send to our children?