By Bill Bauer Santa Monica
While parents ask the school district to beef up security at local elementary schools (Santa Monica Daily Press, Wednesday, January 23, 2002), the city of Santa Monica and at least one elementary school PTA have been disseminating propaganda exhorting school children to “approach strangers on the street and start a conversation.”
Within a week of the incident involving the 10-year-old boy at Roosevelt, Grant School PTA sent a flyer entitled “How to Talk to Your Children About the Homeless” home with every student in the school.
The flyer contained 10 talking points designed to elicit a sympathetic response to the city’s “homeless” plight. One of the statements said, “Some homeless people are so used to people ignoring them that even a friendly, “Hello. How’s your day going?” can cheer someone up...” Amazingly, that very same text was reprinted in a fall, 2001 issue of the Seascape, the official city newsletter. Even though the PTA flyer generated some criticism of the PTA’s social service committee and the school district for allowing it to be sent home (apparently without the district’s OK), it still didn’t stop the city of Santa Monica from further risking the safety of our children to promote political correctness.
Roosevelt parent, George Rosenthal, is 100 percent correct when he says in your article “there are significant issues with some of the homeless who are not just homeless but also have mental illnesses.” They also have drug and alcohol problems, many of them have serious felony criminal records, are potentially violent and some carry diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and are HIV positive. Some are parolees and fugitives and yes, a few are even child molesters.
It is absolutely irresponsible and outrageous for a school PTA and the official news organ of the city to suggest that it is perfectly OK for a child to approach strangers on the street or any of our street people and chat up a conversation.
Unfortunately, the pro-homeless zealots in our city government including the “How to Talk’s...” author, the city’s homeless services coordinator, Joel Schwartz and Seascape editor, Judy Rambeau, would apparently rather risk our children’s well being to sell an agenda — an agenda, by the way, that is set by the majority power on city council.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 28, 2002. Read the original PDF.