Safe and secure? Don’t bet on it.

Our kids are not all right. They’re not always safe and secure at school, no matter what the politicians, our school boards, and the bureaucrats in Harrisburg tell us.

Yet if you read the reports from the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), parents have “nothing to fear” when they send their children off to school this fall. And taxpayers should rest assured that their tax dollars are being used wisely. If we believe their reports, citizens should be comforted, knowing — if nothing else — that PDE follows the law.

If we believe them, not one school in the entire state of Pennsylvania qualifies as “persistently dangerous.” Not one.

If you believe that, you probably also believed those in government who told us that to fight off Covid, we needed to wear a mask to walk into a restaurant, but that we were safe to take it off once we sat down. You believed Karine Jean-Pierre when she told us that Biden secured the border. And you may even believe politicians who argue that violent crime is down in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York City.

As the saying goes in politics; “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” 

It’s even worse now because they’re purposefully misleading us about student safety. They don’t want us to know the truth: that they’re failing our kids. And they are far more passionate about opposing any form of parental choice in education than about protecting our kids.

According to PDE’s official reports, not one school in Pennsylvania meets the government’s standard of being “persistently dangerous.” Zero. 

Strawberry Mansion High School is “perfectly safe.” So is Lincoln in Northeast Philly, with 900 students taking classes in trailers in the parking lot — just as safe as if they were in Gladwyne. Ditto for students in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh.

Feel better? 

From the people in government, with the leftwing mindset that justifies gaslighting citizens or manipulating standards and data to advance their ideologically driven causes — who revised crime data over and over until it “showed” that violent crime was declining in our cities — they’ve hit a new low, an even more cruel and deceptive low.

Democrat politicians and their apologists gamed-us on crime data — daring us to not trust our eyes. But we trusted our eyes. Then we dug into the data and learned how they mislead us. Step one:“Legalize” shoplifting up to $999. Then, charge crooks with misdemeanors instead of felonies. Next, plea bargain cases to lesser or no crime committed. Finally, offer “no cash bail” — then, too many trials never happen. Presto: violent crime is down! 

Now, they’re doing it to our students, their parents, and taxpayers. 

Pennsylvania law (and federal reporting law) is designed to protect our students, inform our parents, and offer parents “safe passage” for their children from a “persistently dangerous school” to a safer public school. Schools are obligated to track violent incidents — when police officers are called into a school and arrests are made. And school districts are required to compile their data and provide it to PDE — so that officials, parents and taxpayers can monitor school safety.

If a school was determined to be “persistently dangerous,” parents would be allowed to transfer their child to another public school — no longer forced to attend his/her local violent school just because of their child’s zip code. 

As detailed in a report by the Commonwealth Foundation’s Rachel Langan, schools have been gaming the system. Putting bureaucrats first. Protecting their image and reputation — not looking out for students or informing parents.

How? In short, using the Larry Krasner method of lowering crime rates. Readers can reach no other conclusion than school officials are gaming the system. Crimes and incidents are intentionally set at a less dangerous level in violation of the plain language of the law.

Most public high schools — and many middle schools — have safety officers. If a fight, attack, or other act of violence at school is “handled” by the school’s safety officers — if the police are not called in — then there’s “nothing to see here.” If the police are called in, but everyone agrees not to file charges, then it’s “all clear.”

The report’s analysis — referencing data by Professor Robert Strauss at Carnegie Mellon University — paints a very different picture. A picture based in reality — what students and parents know. (Just like we know that violent crime isn’t down in our cities.) 

Professor Strauss shows that, in fact, almost 71 percent of Philadelphia public schools are “persistently dangerous.” Almost 84 percent in Pittsburgh. And 37 percent of all Pennsylvania public schools — where 46 percent of all public school students are educated. 

Not zero.

The law exists to protect students, to inform parents and advise taxpayers and legislators about the safety of our schools — learning what’s working and what isn’t. Yet we’ve learned nothing of value — except that some adults care more about themselves than the students in their care. 

The law exists to empower parents so that they can learn about the safety of their children, and children in their district — in their community. Yet parents are still powerless.

The law exists so that children could be rescued from “persistently dangerous schools” and allowed safe passage to another public school, chosen by the student’s parents. But because every school is deemed “safe,” not one student has been rescued from a violent school.

Tragically, there’s a group of politicians and bureaucrats who are so convinced that they’re right — who are so focused on protecting their jobs — that they’re willing to defy the law, mislead parents, and keep our children in harm’s way.

Now that we know the truth, now that we know the adults are protecting their jobs and not our children. Harrisburg politicians must fix this. And they must offer school choice to parents whose children are cruelly trapped in these dangerous schools.

Guy Ciarrocchi is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation. He writes for Broad + Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. Follow Guy at @PaSuburbsGuy.