"Code Red" at Bradley Tech

[RyDogg66]

20 Squads converged on Bradley Tech about 15 minutes ago, according to jsonline. Wonder what is going down over there.

[patrickgpe]

you know that school confuses me. Its the nicest and newest school in mps. From past reports the school is full of students who have been expelled from other schools. There has been more trouble there than just about anywhere in mps. You would think they would put students in there that would like a technical background for college instead of just a holding chamber for the worse of the worse.

[sgtcluels]

For a second there I thought it was some post about Mountain Dew...

 

Hope it's an a police over reaction and nothing bad.

[patrickgpe]

looks like east side vs west side fights on all 4 floors

 

link

[TooLiveBrew]

I can't click the link... am I the only one?

[hawing]

I couldn't either, but I replaced the link above. It sounds like things are settling down.

[homer]

"the incident began as a fight between two girls in a common area that quickly drew about 100 other students. Some other fighting and scuffling followed, she said, but there were no injuries reported."

My dad taught junior high for 35 years and said the cat fights were always 10 times more entertaining, er, vicious than the fights between guys.

http://www.isd77.k12.mn.us/schools/dakota/mystery/mystery2006/catfight.jpg

[jordanmuehl]

Wow. Interesting stuff. At least the situation was diffused by the MPD and the administration before it could have turned into a bigger problem.

[Brian the Automator]

Girl fights are vicious... Hair pulling, biting, etc. They don't follow the geneva convention of schoolyard ruffhousing. The nice thing about when two guys used to duke it out, was that they'd probably be friends 45 minutes later.

[jaybird2001wi]

At my old high school, Racine Park, I witnessed a couple girl fights and they fought dirty and there was a fight that resulted in a girl getting her eye busted.

One of the most extreme fights happened outside during fifth period when a juvenile delinquent who had a life of crime fought another kid and used brass knuckles to pummell the kid. My high school wasn't even the worst public school in Racine (JI Case was worse as they integrated the country bumpkin kids and inner city kids through bussing and my HS was more of a neighborhood where we knew each other).

[patrickgpe]

looks like 15 were arrested

 

http://www.jsonline.com/watch/?watch=1&date=2/13/2008&id=35581

[jaybird2001wi]

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that 15 students were arrested, including one for obstruction after striking a police officer. They say that just under 30 face suspensions.

This is the second time Bradley Tech has faced bad publicity. Remember the brawl after a basketball game last year? Maybe MPS should review Tech again and see if there are patterns of violence at the school.

When I was in high school, there was always two or three off-duty Racine Police officers that ran security at my school and there was a direct line of communication between them, administration and the police station in case anything got out of control.

[danzig6767]

Man, MPS is such an incredible mess. I would work 20 hours a day digging graves or standing over a deep fryer before i'd stay in Milwaukee and put my kid in an MPS high school.

[homer]

Rufus King is a pretty good school. The problem is that it's the exception not the norm.

[bball123h2]

Tech is horrible on many levels, most notably their "awesome" new building. The layout is "open concept", meaning that classrooms are more like cubicles than actual rooms with things like sound barriers. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but the lockers were originally inside the classrooms, meaning that disruptions occurred rather frequently.

 

I'm amazed how far MPS seems to have fallen in the 7 years since I graduated.

[Paul77]

Man, MPS is such an incredible mess. I would work 20 hours a day digging graves or standing over a deep fryer before i'd stay in Milwaukee and put my kid in an MPS high school.

I second that.

 

I lived in Milwaukee for 25 years - most of those in the north side of town near the Washington Park area. I attended South Division High and thought MPS was bad and getting worse at that time(13 years ago). Even though I love Milwaukee and always will - when it came time to place my first child in school I looked long and hard at the surrounding area and those school systems looking for an alternative to MPS. We did wind up moving out of town - at a great monetary cost - but I think it was worth it.

 

My Mom works for a MPS grade school and tells me stories. She also volunteers from time to time in my sons class in our school district. She knows - and points out - the many differences but I'm not going to sit here and bash MPS, they do a great job of that themselves. I just know I made the right decision to move.

[pitchleague]

I know that times change and society changes, but I still find it incredible that high schools have to have security and/or police presence. Oh for the days when the first line of defense was the school janitor.

 

(note: I am not bashing schools for security. I know that in this day and age it is necessary. I was just waxing poetic about my past for a second.)

[paul253]

I think most schools, high schools at least, do have security. Obviously its not enough, but will it ever be enough? The Police Dept is short enough as it is, there's no way they can go into every school. Interesting enough though, one of the schools they actually are in is Bradley Tech

[temke]

some of you may remember that i taught at tech for 3 years (03-06). the school is an architectural disaster.

 

it is nice and pretty on the outside, but completely useless for education on the inside. there are definitely still lockers in the classroom. they had to add walls between the "halls" and the "classrooms" after the fact. there was talk of actually adding doors to some of the areas as well. you just cannot explain what it is like teaching there. impossible comes to mind.

 

the principal when i was there left this year, so i cant speak to the administration, but a large majority of the staff that was there two years ago are good teachers. the trade teachers are spectacular. unfortunately they cant/dont get the same concessions in terms of who they admit and who they dont like say rufus king.

 

it was amazing how one useless student could ruin an entire class.

[danzig6767]

I went to the old Tech and was far from an angel. About half way through my junior year i began being truant quite often and in my senior year was a chronic truant, pretty amazing i managed to graduate. Even with skipping all the time and failing multiple classes, little happened to me. I'd take pending suspension notices out of the mail from the school sent for my dad and Tech made no effort to contact my house when they got no response to notices sent to my house. I also wouldn't end up getting suspended. My dad was a big time alcoholic at the time and let me do as i pleased so even if the school has contacted him i wouldn't have got in trouble, but the point is that the school made no effort beyond sending notices that obviously were being ignored.

 

Tech would also give me detentions all the time for being late to school, skipping classes, and for breaking various other school rules. At one point i had racked up something like 150-200 detentions, which of course i just ignored and never served them.

 

Now MPS/Tech seems 50 times worse than when i went there. I saw my share of fights and even saw a teacher attacked by a student, but the violence looks to be much worse and prevalent now. I feel bad for teachers that still care, they can only work with what parents send them.

[JoeHova]

Rufus King isn't just "pretty good", it's the best high school in the state and one of the best in the country.

 

Anyway, I went to MPS. When I was in middle/high school my friend's sister was probably the most feared person in our school(s). When she fought other girls, she made sure to rip off their shirts/bras after beating them down in order to cause maximum embarrassment. She was about 6'2 and built like a man. Once she got arrested for knocking our (male) Physics teacher unconscious in a melee. Nobody wanted to fight her, male or female, student or teacher. She eventually got expelled, of course.

[homer]

"Rufus King isn't just "pretty good", it's the best high school in the state and one of the best in the country. "

 

 

Based on what metric?

[JoeHova]

"Rufus King isn't just "pretty good", it's the best high school in the state and one of the best in the country. "

 

 

Based on what metric?

 

 

 

based on Newsweek's rankings, which had King as the top school in Wisconsin 4 of the past 5 years. Also based on their being one of only a couple hundred schools in the country to win the National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence Award multiple times.

 

I didn't go there and I am the first to bash MPS, but credit should be given when it's due and King deserves a lot of credit.