OPINIONS

Sometimes a single person can right a very big wrong

And sometimes that person is a child with courage greater than their years and their time in history

Publisher Raymond M Eckenrode reckenrode@breezenewspapers com

Executive Editor Valarie Harring vharring@breezenewspapers com

Editor Paulette LeBlanc pleblanc@breezenewspapers com

Advertising Director Laurie Ragle lragle@ breezenewspapers com

Advertising Sales

Charlene Russ cruss@breezenewspapers com

Design & Layout Chris Strine cstrine@breezenewspapers com Obituaries Debbie Carletti obits@breezenewspapers com

In 1963, a high school senior named Rosalind Blalock wanted to attend a Lee County high school that would better prepare her for the career she was planning

Rosalind wanted to attend Fort Myers High School, which had the lab equipment and books she thought would help get her ready for medical technology coursework

There were two problems:

Rosalind was Black

And the only public school open to her was L e e C o u n t y ’ s a l l - B l a c k h i g h s c h o o l i n

Dunbar

She was denied admission for Fort Myers High although it was nearly a decade after the U S Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that “segregating children in the public schools by race was inherently unequal” and that districts across the nation must move with “all deliberate speed” to desegregate their public schools

Rosalind sued

She won

And, all told, it took 35 years for the School District of Lee County to reach “unitary status,” meaning the district had finally “eliminated its dual systems of education ”

The history synopsis above is from the United States District Court Middle District of Florida, which did not find compliance until 1999, when it ended the consent decree under which the School District of Lee County had been forced to operate until full desegregation was reached.

As the School District of Lee County pre-

Get real

To the editor:

Web Poll

Previous Web Poll Question: Are you satisfied with the county’s response after Hurricane Ian?

■ Yes 45%

■ No 23%

■ Somewhat 23% ■ No comment 9%

The completely absurd and baseless argument by the Socialist Democratic Party on gun control here in the USA seems to find comfort in the original date of the 2cd Amendment (1791) and the firearms of the day, being mostly single-shot muskets, and some with two barrels and two shots. They claim we have no such second amendment rights with modern firearms of today because the 2cd amendment was never intended to offer that much firepower to mere “US Citizens.”

That is, once again, a huge (incorrect) a s s u m p t i o n o n t h e p a r t o f t h e L i b e r a l Socialist

The citizens of that era were, in fact, armed pares to end its cumbersome School Choice l o t t e r y s y s t e m , w h i c h h a s i t s r o o t s i n Rosalind’s lawsuit, let us dip back into The Breeze story archives

Rosalind Blalock vs Lee County Schools was filed in 1964 with the help of the NAACP The suit led to the desegregating of the school system in 1969-1970 with the school district implementing a new and, ultimately, troublesome boundary-based assignment system

F r o m 1 9 7 0 - 1 9 9 5 t h e d i s t r i c t m o v e d school boundaries as Lee County’s population grew, often resulting in long bus rides, particularly for minority students

Unhappy with the transportation issues and shifting boundaries that changed assigned schools, students and parents protested

In 1996, the school board approved a new policy for the 1998-1999 school year the creation of three geographic zones that would allow parents to rank the schools within “their” zone with assignment to be determined by a School Choice lottery

The plan worked, well enough to get the district into compliance with the court-issued consent decree but parents have long complained about the issue upon which Choice has come to fail again, transportation

Long bus rides for many

Late drop-offs resulting in tardies and missed classes

So School Choice, as originally formulated, is coming to an end

In its wake will come a new elementary school proximity plan, approved by the School Board of Lee County this week to save on with the same weapons that were possessed by our military and as such, were “equally armed” if the need should ever arise Our citizens of today are already restricted from purchasing or even owning most of the arms possessed by our modern military as the rights of our citizens have been diminished or eliminated considerably by big government as we have been pushed closer and closer to the w o k e u t o p i a n i d e a l s o f t h e S o c i a l i s t Democrats

T h e n u m b e r o f m u r d e r s b y f i r e a r m s dropped in 2021 from 2020 to 12,520 The National Highway Safety System said that 42,915 people died in traffic accidents in the U S in 2021 None died in 1791 from automobile traffic accidents Does that mean people should not be permitted to own or drive be mailed to: Pine transportation wear-and-tear and the resultant cost on kids and buses alike

The views expressed on the Opinions pages are just that opinions These pages are intended to convey a range of viewpoints; opinions printed on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper. Opposing views are welcome.

Something similar at the middle and high school levels is coming next

District staffers and School Board officials alike see some pain ahead as the transition takes place as some parents now face the choice of changing their child’s school or getting them there themselves as bus transportation out-of-zone will not be provided

They also see positives getting kids into seats more efficiently and having more money for classrooms to boot

District officials assure us parents, guardians and taxpayers all that choice of school (small “c” as there will be fewer schools from which to choose) will remain, thus ensuring that schools offer the same learning opportunities and environment

As well Lee County’s schools certainly should and must do

Let us also recall another courageous woman of color who painted a picture a tad more Orwellian

Former School Board member Gwynetta G i t t e n s , w h o s e a d v o c a c y f o r t h e S c h o o l District of Lee County’s East Zone, never lacked passion, pointed out that when looking hard at investments in infrastructure that schools may be equal but some schools seem more equal than others when it comes to adding seats and determining where and when to build or rebuild

For Proximity to be an improvement on Choice, not only the district staff, but the board cars?

How many people died in 1791 of fentanyl overdoses in the U S ? Probably close to zero but in 2020 in the U S we lost 56,516 of our citizens to this “permissible” epidemic W e l o s t 5 8 , 2 2 0 m i l i t a r y p e r s o n n e l i n Vietnam. That conflict lasted almost 20 years and yet, in one year we lost almost the same number of Americans to fentanyl as we lost in a 20-year war Protest after protest accompanied that war and yet no one protests our open borders that contribute so heavily to annual fentanyl deaths that exceed firearm murders by over 400 percent per year

Firearm deaths, to the media, are nothing more than a red herring Every time some nutjob goes crazy and kills multiple victims with a firearm, the media lights up the airways for a week or two in hopes of getting control of y o u r f i r e a r m s a n d e r a s i n g y o u r 2 c d Amendment rights but for every one person killed by a firearm there are 4 dead from fentanyl and open borders Where is the sensationalistic media guilt trip then?

Where is the media screaming for closing the border and stopping this massacre and the insane Biden border policies that no one understands? They should be screaming at least four times louder Their answer to firearm deaths: take your guns away Their answer to fentanyl deaths: what problem?

Max Christian St James City