Reason says this is a good reminder of why parents need choice when it comes to education. I’d like to remind everyone that the Educational Industrial Complex often argues from the premise that only those who are certified by the state are qualified to properly educate children.

This is one of those who the state said was competent to act as a counselor:

A civil rights organization that has been issuing complaints about the Jefferson Parish school system’s treatment of black and special education students is adding to its grievances by spotlighting racially incendiary comments posted on the Internet by a school psychologist in Jefferson. The comments under scrutiny appeared on NOLA.com and Twitter.

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The school psychologist, Mark Traina, has worked with alternative schools and in central administration with the process of referring children to those campuses. Traina argued on Monday that his online opinions are well-reasoned and that they do not reflect on the way the school system operates.

“The Southern Poverty Center knows that these allegations are ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE!,” Traina wrote in an education forum on NOLA.com last week, using his own name as he criticized the center’s earlier allegations. “This is just another way to harass the Jefferson Parish Public School System. One only needs to read the Times Picayune to see who the real trouble makers are. Sadly, it is disproportionately young black males. Everyone knows that our jails throughout the United States are disproportionately filled with black people. Why would the rate be any different in an educational environment?”

He cited what he said are statistics about high incarceration rates among African-Americans and high crime in predominantly black neighborhoods.

“Even one of the best known Civil Rights Activists in America recently indicated (I won’t mention any names) that it is MUCH safer to walk through a predominately white neighborhood after dark than in black neighborhood,” he wrote.

“I live in Slidell land I MUST admit it is one of the safest places that I have ever lived in the State of Louisiana,” he wrote. “All I can say is, ‘Thank God for Lake Pontchartrain.’”

His posts on Twitter, also using his real name, are more heated, including a January comment that, “Young Black Thugs who won’t follow the law need to be put down not incarcerated. Put down like the Dogs they are!”

I don’t generally side with the SPLC.  I think they are a liberal organization.  That being said, it’s hard to defend Traina when he tweets such things.  Later in the article, Traina identifies himself as “a Wallace man at heart,” referring to the segregationist Democrat George Wallace.

Traina didn’t even attempt to walk the comments back.  He claimed everything he said was backed up by facts, that he wasn’t racist, but a realist.

Conservatives say parents should be able to pull their kids out of schools that employ such hate and put them in a safer environment.  Liberals would deny parents that right.

Where do you stand?

 Photo Credit:  Bruno Girin