Lambda School is Silicon Valley's big bet on reinventing education and making student debt obsolete. But students say it's a 'cult' and they would have been better off learning on their own.

Rosalie Chan

Austen Allred, CEO and co-founder of Lambda School Lambda School


Some of Silicon Valley's best and brightest believe that Lambda School is a new model for vocational education that could make student debt obsolete.
The big innovation: Rather than paying up-front for tuition to its 9-month coding bootcamp program, Lambda School asks most students to sign income sharing agreements — where they pay a portion of their salary for the first two years after getting a job that pays $50,000 or more.
However, we spoke to former and current Lambda School student, who say that it falls short of that promise, with under-qualified instructors and an incomplete curriculum that requires them to rely on self-teaching and outside resources to complete the program.
Those students say that the program is like a "cult," where they worry about criticizing Lambda School for fear of getting kicked out, and where they're encouraged by staff — including CEO Austen Allred — to respond to critical social media posts with positive testimonials.
The Lambda School students say that when they voice concerns about the program or complain of harassment from fellow students, they get brushed off, ignored, or made to feel they were the problem.
Lambda School is a graduate of the famed Y Combinator startup accelerator program, and has attracted $48 million in venture capital from investors including GV (formerly Google Ventures), Stripe, and even Ashton Kutcher.
"While we can't respond to specific inquiries out of respect for privacy, we appreciate the concerns of any and all of our students. We are continuously aiming to be transparent on where we need improvement and the steps we are taking to address them," CEO Austen Allred said in a statement.


Erica Thompson has always had an interest in technology. Her father, a municipal transit operator, taught her the basics of programming, which she practiced while he built computers in his free time.


She initially studied music education, but after her father had a heart attack, she decided that it might be time to pursue a career in programming. She had just wrapped up a software development course at a local college in Los Angeles when she saw a Facebook ad for Lambda School — an online coding bootcamp that requires no upfront tuition.

She decided to take a chance to hone her skills and make herself more competitive in the job market, without paying out of pocket.

It's that very sales pitch that's driven Lambda School, based in San Francisco, to a position of prominence in Silicon Valley. A graduate of the famed Y Combinator startup incubator program (previous graduates include Airbnb and Dropbox), it's gone on to raise over $48 million from investors like GV (formerly Google Ventures), Stripe, and even Ashton Kutcher. The school boasts that there are nearly 3,000 students currently enrolled.

What makes it unique from other coding schools is its income sharing agreement (ISA) model. Students sign a contract, agreeing to pay 17% of their income for two years when they get a job paying at least $50,000 a year, with a maximum payout of $30,000. It also offers a less-popular choice to pay a flat $20,000 in tuition, instead.


To many, Lambda School represents a better way of thinking about higher education and vocational training, as Wired put it in an August headline: "Lambda School's For-Profit Plan to Solve Student Debt." And because students attend Lambda School remotely for eight hours a day, it's theoretically open to anybody, anywhere. The model has proven so appealing, other startups are following suit with their own ISA-based business models.

Lambda School boasts of its successes, saying that graduates of the 9-month program go on to work for companies like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft. According to the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting, 60.9% of Lambda School students were employed 90 days after graduation, going up to 85.9% within 180 days. Graduates earn a median annual base salary of $60,000, according to that same study — although a Lambda School spokesperson puts that figure at $70,000, and notes that many graduates are in rural areas where average pay is lower.

What Thompson found, however, was that Lambda School was very different than what she hoped it would be. She says that she was brushed off by staff when she reported racist harassment from two of her classmates.

Not long after, Thompson says she was told that she was in danger of being removed from the program if she didn't hit certain goals. She says that she ultimately was kicked out of Lambda School, towards the end of the program, just days after raising her concerns directly with CEO and cofounder Austen Allred.


"It seems that if anyone speaks up and is too critical of the program in any of the channels, they react as if the student is the problem, though they mandate feedback daily," Thompson told Business Insider.

This is indicative of the general atmosphere at Lambda School, according to 5 former and current students, most of whom asked for anonymity for the sake of their careers. We also spoke to applicants and other people familiar with the Lambda School program.

They say that while Lambda School pitches itself as a first step towards better job opportunities, the reality can be more underwhelming: The curriculum is lacking, the instructors are often under-qualified, and students are afraid to speak out in a culture described as being akin to a "cult," they say.

"Lambda School is not worth the life it takes from you, and it's not worth the dollar amount you agree to pay them back," a former student said.


Lambda School did not make Allred available for an interview. In a statement, Allred said:

"While we can't respond to specific inquiries out of respect for privacy, we appreciate the concerns of any and all of our students. We are continuously aiming to be transparent on where we need improvement and the steps we are taking to address them."

"We adopted the ISA model to open up access to students from all walks of life and are constantly iterating on our curriculum and processes based on their unique experiences and feedback. At the same time, we're working to streamline those same feedback loops to make them as effective as possible. There's always room to improve, and we welcome any additional feedback on how we can continue to raise the bar."
'Trust the process'

Allred is known to many in Silicon Valley as a charismatic leader with a compelling personal background. He moved to San Francisco from Utah to break into the tech industry, and says he first lived in a car while his career got off the ground.


He's said that he decided to start Lambda School under the ISA model after being "taken aback" when speaking with someone who couldn't afford the $10,000 to attend a coding bootcamp. The goal, Allred has said, is to increase the economic opportunity for anybody, anywhere, who wants to build their own lucrative career in tech.

However, Lambda School students say that in reality, the program feels like a "cult" that attracts people down on their luck or otherwise in tough financial situations, and then locks them into an intensive program that ultimately leaves them on the hook to pay back thousands of dollars in their future wages.

"Lambda School is literally a cult," a former student said. "Cults are hard to leave. Cults play on your emotional vulnerability. Cults keep you mentally and physically exhausted so you can be more compliant…They're specifically targeting people who are vulnerable in hard-life situations."

To that point, 5 current and former Lambda School students tell Business Insider that they feel that they can't criticize or critique the program.


A recent blog post from Allred highlights Lambda School's process for gathering feedback, where students are given constant opportunity to submit their thoughts, both directly to instructors and anonymously.

However, the students say they don't feel comfortable airing any grievances: They're not only concerned about getting kicked out of the program, but also that they may end up blacklisted by companies like Nexient that are known to hire Lambda School graduates.

Often, when students do bring up concerns about the school, they're just told to "trust the process," two sources say.

"It almost feels like gaslighting," a student said. "A lot of students have brought up similar concerns, and they're continually disregarded. There's a mantra they keep repeating: 'Trust the process of Lambda.'"

Troll defense

Allred, for his part, is known for personally responding to critics of Lambda School on social media. "People want to think that Lambda is a scam, because they want to believe the results we're producing are impossible," Allred recently told Wired.

It's common for students to spring to the school's defense, too.

For example, when somebody posted to Twitter saying "Lambda School is trash," or when a Reddit user last year wrote a post saying "Is Lambda School really terrible?" users claiming to be Lambda School students chimed in with their thoughts. While those posts can sometimes contain critiques of the program, they're usually positive on Lambda School overall.

"Your experience will vary based on who is your instructor and your PM, as with everything, some are better than others, but honestly, overall, I have had a really good experience, and I'm very happy with it," one commenter said.


However, these posts are at least sometimes made because Lambda School encourages students to defending the company's reputation in public, students say – with management, staff, and even classmates all known to encourage students to respond to any haters.

A screenshot of Lambda School's main chatroom on Slack, shared with Business Insider, shows Allred himself thanking students for responding to a critical Twitter post. "Thanks guys for tweeting there, appreciate that," Allred wrote, as he shared a link to yet another Twitter post.
'The curriculum is garbage'

The Lambda School students that Business Insider spoke with said that the actual curriculum has its problems, too. Expectations are unclear, they say, with constantly-shifting deadlines and classwork assignments that are themselves packed with software bugs.

Some students say that to actually master the programming topics at hand, they had to use outside resources like Treehouse, Khan Academy or YouTube, because the Lambda School program itself wasn't sufficient. One former student goes so far as to say that it doesn't do enough to teach the fundamentals of computer science.


"Everyone knows the curriculum is garbage," another former student said. "They know it's not working. If you're keeping up, you either already had a foundation or you're self-teaching. The actual school is not effective at teaching. People are going outside to get what they need."

In general, many graduates who found jobs feel they would have been successful without Lambda School, though the school gets the credit for their success, two former students say.

Ultimately, some students say, they feel like they would have gotten the same or better education in coding with self-guided learning programs from places like Udemy or Khan Academy.

"Lambda can do exactly the same as $10 course from Udemy," a former student said. "If you are able to get any resource on the Internet and spend the next few weeks actually reading through it and coding small projects, you're going to get a better experience than Lambda."


Students also give poor marks to the quality of teaching staff at Lambda School. Three current and former students complain that instructors are often themselves graduates of other coding bootcamps, with little real-world experience. One former student describes the instructors as "highly incompetent."

Among the teaching staff is Ryan Allred, brother to CEO Austen Allred, who works at Lambda School as a data science instructor. However, his LinkedIn profile indicates that his experience in the tech industry consists of graduating from a web development bootcamp and working as an intern in the AI-related field of deep learning.

A Lambda School spokesperson defends his experience, and says he's "one of our higher rated instructors at the school." When Business Insider checked his LinkedIn profile after reaching out to Lambda School for comment, Ryan Allred's previous experience had changed from "Deep Learning Intern" to "Deep Learning Engineer."

Current and former students also say that Lambda School wouldn't be able to run without the labor of its team leads: students who are employed by the school to lead team meetings, fill out forms rating student performance, and conduct one-on-one meetings to review code.

'Disorganized'

Former and current Lambda School students describe the program as "disorganized," with topics, projects, and even the length of the program itself seemingly changing at random.

Starting in May, Lambda School extended the length of the program from 30 weeks to 9 months. A spokesperson says that existing students were given the option to either finish the program as scheduled, switch to the 9-month timeline, or else leave the program without triggering their ISA. No students stayed on the 30-week plan, the spokesperson said.

However, three sources say that students weren't warned of the change at all and suddenly had their expected date of graduation extended by about a month with no warning. That presented a potential financial risk, the sources say, given that many simply don't have the time to work paying jobs while enrolled in the intensive program.

This kind of disorganization appears to have led to at least one costly mistake for Lambda School: In August, Business Insider reported that Lambda School was facing a $75,000 fine for failing to obtain a key registration with educational authorities in the state of California, where it's headquartered.


At the time, Allred blamed Lambda School's former legal counsel for the decision not to apply for the registration in the first place. Failing to obtain that registration could endanger its ability to continue to operate, regulators told Business Insider. Currently, Lambda School's registration application is under review, authorities say.

Read more: The hot Silicon Valley coding bootcamp Lambda School is paying a $75,000 fine for not registering properly with the state of California

Two people also say that the application process for Lambda School is confusing and inconsistent. Susan Money, from Michigan, said that she was unimpressed with the quality of a prerequisite screening class required to enter the program, and she never heard back from Lambda School after she completed it.

Another, Jacqueline Homan of Pennsylvania, who applied for the program hoping it would lift her out of poverty, said that she withdrew from that same class for medical reasons, and was told that she could re-enter at any time — but was bumped from Lambda School's Slack without notice in the interim period and couldn't raise Lambda School for help, even though she contacted the school to add her back.


Later, when Homan posted about her Lambda School experience on Quora, Allred responded, saying Homan's statements were false and that she was not accepted. Homan says she never received any rejection email.

"I basically got blown off," Homan told Business Insider. "If a program like that, that practically guaranteed job placement, if something like that isn't for someone like me, who the hell is it for?"
Diversity matters

Lambda School prides itself on a diverse student body. Because classes are held remotely, and because there's no upfront cost, it can accommodate students who might otherwise not have access to an education in programming. However, current and former students say that they've been disappointed that Lambda School's teaching staff isn't diverse, in turn: most of the school's instructors are male or are not from underrepresented groups.

"Diversity is an important area of focus for the team," a Lambda School spokesperson said. "There's been little turnover on the instruction team, and the initial team was hired primarily on referrals from the founders' home state of Utah, not a very diverse state. As we've grown we've adopted a rigorous hiring process that has resulted in 5 of the last 7 instructor hires coming from underrepresented groups."


Still, students say, Lambda School can sometimes make for a learning environment that's uncomfortable for students from underrepresented groups, with staff doing little to intervene. Students recall instances of racist memes spreading through the Slack chatrooms, or when a white male student wore a Mexican sombrero to a presentation in front of the class.

On one occasion, a former student says, instructors started referring to each other as "Nazis." Lambda School says it was unaware of this incident and could not find a record of it on its internal Slack.

"We take all forms of racism, sexism, and other discrimination very seriously," the spokesperson said. "Many students have been removed for violating our student code of conduct, which is primarily focused on ensuring a positive, safe learning environment for all students. We actively respond to inappropriate, unprofessional, and discriminatory content."

When students do report harassment, however, they're brushed off, ignored, or made to feel that they were the problem, students say. That was the case with Thompson, the student who says she was dismissed from the program after complaining of racist harassment.


"They advertise the school as being for non-traditional students who may not be able to afford other routes into the industry, but those same students are also less likely to be able to get justice if something goes wrong," Thompson said.
'You have to buy into it'

So, ultimately, is Lambda School worth it? That appears to be a matter of perspective.

The $60,000 median base salary of Lambda School graduates, as reported by the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting, is slightly below the $65,000 median across all coding bootcamps according to Course Report, which studied programs such as Hackbright Academy, Hack Reactor, and Fullstack Academy. However, going with Lambda School's own figures of $70,000 makes for a more favorable comparison.

A Lambda School blog post says that it plans to share more data on graduate salaries and employment each quarter, starting early next year.


Furthermore, the income sharing agreement model doesn't necessarily mean that Lambda School is cheaper than its competitors in absolute terms. Both the $20,000 flat-rate tuition plan and the $30,000 cap on ISA repayments over the two-year period are well over the average bootcamp tuition of $13,584, also according to Course Report.

To be sure, not all Lambda School students pay as much as $30,000. According to Lambda School's own math, if a student makes the minimum $50,000 annual salary that triggers the ISA, that student would be on the hook to pay $708.33 a month, totaling to nearly $17,000 at the end of the two-year repayment period.

A spokesperson points out that Lambda School's program is significantly longer than other programs of its like, and says that it includes more resources to help students get a job after graduation. The spokesperson said that the various coding education programs are very different, and it can "be like comparing apples and oranges." The spokesperson said that "we have always been open and upfront about the cost of our program but believe it is important to also be transparent about other school factors."

There still remains the question of cost, however, given that Lambda School's ISA means that students will be giving up a portion of their earnings after graduation for the two-year repayment period.


"That is an affordability concern for students who are getting a job and will still have to make ends meet, pay for shelter, pay for food, and take care of medication and other life expenses," Joanna Darcus, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, told Business Insider.

Still, despite these concerns, a former student says it's no surprise why so many of their fellow students and graduates jump to Lambda School's defense on social media and elsewhere. For them, Lambda School is a big, bold bet on their future success. That means that when things do go wrong, they may not want to admit it — even to themselves, the former student said.

"If you're in Lambda School as a student, you have to buy into it," a former student said. "You told your friends and family and girlfriend and kids that you're going to become a software engineer. You don't want to look like a loser if you didn't make it. I think people put all their accountability on themselves for making it work when the school is failing them."

Black parents say their children are being suspended for petty reasons that force them to take off from work and sometimes lose their jobs

Charles Bell, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Sciences, Illinois State University
Sun, September 3, 2023 

Black parents are having to call off work to deal with their children's minor infractions at school. Cavan Images

When “Mike,” the father of a ninth grade student, got a call from his daughter’s school, the first thing he asked was: “How important is this?”

“They said, ‘Well, it’s important,’” Mike told me during an interview for my research.

When Mike went to his daughter’s school to see what was the problem, school officials told him his daughter was being suspended for giving a boy a hug. He ended up missing out on some of his hourly wages to deal with the situation.

“I was like, ‘Nah. Not only am I missing out on some hours at work, I’m missing out on some important meetings, and also commitments that I have made, to come up here and talk about suspensions, a five-day suspension for giving somebody a hug,” Mike told me. “That’s one of the things that every time they call me, I always raise my voice about that. It’s been times where the school has suspended her, and I told the school, 'Well, she can’t stay home with me. She doesn’t have nowhere else to go, so she has to stay at the school.’”

Mike’s dilemma is just one of dozens that I document in my 2021 book, “Suspended: Punishment, Violence, and the Failure of School Safety”. The book is part of my ongoing research into how Black families view school punishment and its impact on their daily lives. For my book, I interviewed 55 students from urban and suburban school districts throughout Michigan who received school suspensions, and their parents. I used fake names to protect their confidentiality.

As millions of students transition to in-person learning in the 2021-2022 school year, many may be wondering if an increase in school suspensions will follow. If suspensions do rise, my research suggests that could result in lost wages and even lost jobs for parents of Black students, who are suspended at substantially higher rates than white students.

Harm to employment

Much of the research about school suspensions focuses on how suspensions harm students. For instance, although school suspensions are meant to decrease violence and help create a safe environment, research shows suspensions are associated with declines in academic achievement, an increase in Black students leaving school districts with a record of being punitive, dropping out of school and being arrested.

However, as my new book shows, school suspensions also harm parents’ employment. Specifically, mothers and fathers told me that school suspensions led to a reduction in wages, job loss and even forced some of them to accept part-time work.

One such parent is Vanessa, the mother of Franklin, a 10th grade student, who told me she met with school officials to create an individualized education plan – known in schools as an IEP – for her son because of his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, diagnosis. Instead of implementing the plan as they agreed, she said school officials continued to suspend her son for minor offenses related to his ADHD. During our interview, Vanessa shared one instance in which her son’s suspension cost her a job.

“I was working at [place of employment] as a social worker before this job, and at that time I was making an hour,” Vanessa told me. “My husband and I were going through a little difficulty, as we were separated at that time. They were calling me from the school because Franklin was having a rough time. He was gonna get suspended. I said, ‘Well, I have to leave.’ When you’re a social worker at that job, you can’t keep calling in” to say you have to leave work.

[Over 110,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

Reforms inadequate

I also learned that the legislative reforms policymakers have passed in recent years to reduce school suspension rates may not be working in some districts. For instance, several parents told me school officials did not use alternatives to suspension in the years after the reforms were enacted, even though they’re supposed to.

One such parent is Dana, whose son Philip, a ninth grade student, got a two-day suspension for fighting after a school official saw him wrestling with his friends in the gym. Dana says the boys were playing. In our interview, Dana expressed considerable doubt regarding the reforms. Dana told me she wished she would have been aware that school officials were supposed to try alternatives to suspension first.

“I wish I would’ve known that because I don’t think they [school administrators] been doing that,” Dana told me. “I feel like it could be effective, but I don’t feel like it was done with my son at all.”

In recent years, legislators in several states, such as Massachusetts in 2012, Illinois in 2015 and Michigan in 2016, have passed school punishment reform laws that were intended to reduce suspension rates.

In Michigan, the reform guidelines require school officials to consider a student’s age, disability, disciplinary history and the severity of the offense before issuing a punishment. The reform guidelines also encourage school officials to use restorative justice practices, such as peer mediation and conflict resolution strategies, instead of suspensions. Yet, when I interviewed parents, many of them said school officials were not following the rules.

When school officials don’t follow the reforms, it affects parents such as Linda, whose son Deshaun, a 12th grade student, received a three-day suspension because a video showed he was present in the restroom when a fight occurred. When school officials issued the punishment, Deshaun expressed that he entered the restroom before the other boys and did not participate in the fight. Although the video, which I reviewed, shows he was not fighting or talking to the other students, school officials upheld the suspension. Their argument was that all the bystanders should have contacted a school security guard instead of just watching the fight.

When I asked Linda about the effectiveness of the school punishment reforms, she stated:

“I don’t think they have implemented that at all. I haven’t seen that recourse. My son was very upset that he got suspended, ‘cause he was like, 'I wasn’t even part of it.’”

In search of solutions

Though school punishment reforms were intended to reduce suspension rates, studies have found schools that enroll a large percentage of minority students are less likely to implement restorative justice practices.

In “Suspended,” I offer some potential reasons why school officials resist implementing the discipline reforms. For example, some school officials told me the reform guidelines did not recommend a course of action for administrators who violated them and continued to issue suspensions.

I also express the need for stronger legislation, emphasizing restorative justice as a means to reduce suspension rates and increase school safety.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation has a variety of fascinating free newsletters.

It was written by: Charles Bell, Illinois State University.

Read more:

• School suspensions don’t just unfairly penalize Black students – they lead to lower grades and ‘Black flight’

• Zero tolerance laws increase suspension rates for black students

• Why getting back to ‘normal’ doesn’t have to involve police in schools

Charles Bell receives funding from the Midwest Sociological Society.

'Satan Club' approved at Kansas high school

 By Stepheny Price 

Fox News
Published December 26, 2023

A high school in Kansas is embroiled in controversy after a "Satan Club" was approved despite a petition being brought against it.

Olathe Northwest High School, a school in a suburb of Kansas City, has been given the green light to establish a Satan worship/Satan Templist Club, according to Fox 4 Kansas City.



An Olathe Public Schools spokesperson stated, "the club application met the criteria to establish a student-initiated club and is now recognized as a student-initiated club at Olathe Northwest High School."

According to the school district, there was criteria the club had to meet before the application was approved.

'AFTER SCHOOL SATAN CLUB' DRAWS CONCERN FROM TENNESSEE PARENTS: 'FIND SOMEWHERE ELSE'

Olathe Northwest High School in Kansas approved a "Satan Club." (Olathe Public Schools)

One of the terms of the application was that the application itself had to be signed by at least ten students interested in forming the group, while additional signatures needed to come from a student representative and faculty supervisor.

The students that would be the leaders of the club were also expected to make a presentation to administrators about what the group would bring to the high school.

A federal law, known as the Equal Access Act, prohibits public schools from discriminating against a student-initiated group based on a message that is philosophical or religious.

THE SATANIC TEMPLE TO HOST ‘AFTER SCHOOL SATAN CLUB’ AT MEMPHIS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

A spokesperson for the district told Fox 4 KC that this means if the school allows one club, it allows all clubs if the application process is complete and the group meets the guidelines for recognition.

In response to the school's announcement, a concerned student created a petition online called, "Stop The Satan Worship Club at Olathe Northwest," in early December.

"This deeply troubles me and many others in our community as we believe that schools should be places of education and growth, not platforms for satanic indoctrination or controversial practices," Drew McDonald, the creator of the petition wrote in a post.

PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL DISTRICT AGREES TO $200K SETTLEMENT WITH THE SATANIC TEMPLE FOR AFTER SCHOOL SATAN CLUB

A t-shirt promoting an after-school Satan Club. A high school in Kansas has now approved its own after-school Satan Club. (After School Satan Club)

As of Tuesday, the petition had gained 81 new signatures, bringing the total to nearly 7,800. However, it was not enough to keep the group from being approved by the school.

"As an Olathe resident, taxpayer, and Christian, I am appalled that something of this nature was even considered for a Olathe public school. The administrators, executives, teachers that allowed this to happen do not have the children's best interest in mind. This needs to be expunged immediately," one person commented on the petition.

"We urge the relevant authorities in Olathe, KS - school administrators, district officials and local representatives - to reconsider this decision. We believe it is not in the best interest of our children or community," McDonald wrote.

The Kansas high school is now the latest school to create a club like this.

SATANIC TEMPLE LEADER TOUTS AFTER-SCHOOL CLUB AS ALTERNATIVE TO RELIGIOUS CLUBS 'PROSELYTIZING' TO STUDENTS

Last week, the Satanic Temple announced plans to host its first After School Satan Club (ASSC) in Cordova, Tennessee, at Chimneyrock Elementary School.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, a school district reached a settlement with The Satanic Temple in a lawsuit that alleged the district discriminated against students by barring one of the group's After School Satan clubs from using a school building earlier this year.

Last year, elementary schools in Virginia, California and Massachusetts also hosted "Satan Clubs," and were met with criticism from concerned parents.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Olathe School District, but has not yet heard back.

School police didn’t stop Parkland or Uvalde shootings, and often discriminate against students. Why did Biden give them $300m?


Campus police officers are often cited as an effective tool against gun violence. But the data shows they do little to stop school shootings — and often discriminate against students of colour. Josh Marcus reports



The scene of the Parkland shooting in 2018: campus police have been present for

 – but unable to stop – a number of school shootings
(Getty Images)

When it comes to gun violence in America, the clock seems stuck.

The same horrific tragedies occur. The same debates are had. The same solutions are proposed. The same actions are taken. The same tragedies occur once more.

That sense of deja vu is especially palpable when it comes to one of the thorniest parts of the school safety debate: on-campus police.

On Monday, the penalty phase began in the trial of Nikolas Cruz, who shot and killed 17 people and injured numerous others in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas school massacre in Parkland, Florida.

That shooting prompted Florida to require every public school in the state to have armed security personnel on campus to stop mass shootings, even though such security was present and failed at Parkland.

Scot Peterson, then an armed deputy with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, was stationed at the school, and is now facing neglect and negligence charges for failing to enter the school building and confront Cruz. (Mr Peterson has defended his actions, saying he thought the school may have been under sniper fire, and that he followed his training.)

People are brought out of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after the February 14, 2018, Parkland shooting.
(Getty Images)

But that wasn’t a new idea. The same solution had been proposed two decades earlier, after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, where an armed school resource officers was present at the time of the shooting and didn’t stop gunmen from killing 15 people.


And it’s the same fix being put into place now, after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. That’s despite the fact that months of active shooter training, tens of thousands of dollars in security investments, and multiple armed police officers failed to stop gunman Salvador Ramos from entering Robb Elementary School and killing 21 people, and hundreds of officers failed to engage the 18-year-old for more than an hour as he continued shooting students inside.

The much-touted bipartisan gun deal President Joe Biden signed in June doubles funding for school police and other school security measures, investing $300m more in federal anti-violence grants.

US President Joe Biden, joined Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaks on gun crime prevention measures at the White House on June 23, 2021 in Washington DC
(Getty Images)

School resource officers are often one of the only politically acceptable, publicly popular solutions to school shootings that receive new investments.

However, even as the use of so-called “school resource officers” (SROs) has exploded in recent years, data shows the added boots on the ground have done little to stop more mass shootings on campus. Instead, by connecting schools directly to agents of the criminal justice system, school officials seem to have inadvertently imported all the racial biases of mass incarceration along with them.

Police respond to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Tuesday, May 24, 2022
((Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District/Austin American-Statesman via AP, File))

Few if any schools in the 1960s and 1970s had a large police presence, according to Professor F Chris Curran, director of the Education Policy Research Center at the University of Florida.

The 1980 and ‘90s changed that, with the rise of “Tough on Crime” politics and mass shootings like Columbine rocking the national consciousness. Officers were brought in to stop crime on campus, and increasingly, to protect children from gun violence.

“Following Columbine, and as we’ve seen a number of tragic school shootings, some of that narrative and reason for law enforcement has shifted to one of protecting students from external threats, more focused on the mass school shootings as opposed to the more day-to-day violence that might be present in some schools,” he told The Independent.

The Parkland shooting inspired a state law requiring armed security on all public school grounds, a first nationwide
(AFP via Getty Images)

Police are increasingly being deployed even in grade schools.

“It’s not that they’re being brought in because there’s high levels of crime in elementary schools. It’s to be there as an essential protector, to try to prevent something like Sandy Hook or like the tragedy in Uvalde.”

As of 2018, at least 58 per cent of schools had one law enforcement officer, with school police forces distributed roughly evenly between rural and urban schools, and those with and without large populations of students of colour. Since 1998, the US has spent over $1bn on school police.

It’s a trend that looks set to grow, as America once again searches for solutions after a string of mass school shootings.

Polls indicate that parents are extremely supportive of school police, with one survey finding 80 per cent backed SROs, 4 per cent more than those who wanted mental health screenings for all students.

Politicians across the political spectrum support them, too.

New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, ordered an increased police presence in schools after the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, explaining, “We will do everything in our power to ensure students, parents, and educators feel safe at school.” So did New York’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul, ordering routine police check-ins at Empire State schools for the rest of the year.

This month, Michigan’s GOP-controlled legislature allocated $25m for school resource officers,

Days after Uvalde, US Senator for Texas Ted Cruz argued, “We know from past experience that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus.”

Periodically, such as after the 2020 mass racial justice protests, some schools like those in Milwaukee have reevaluated their relationships with police forces or cut ties, but by and large the school resource officer trend continues unabated.

SROs may have become one of America’s primary ways of stopping school shootings, but according to University of Florida’s Professor Curran, the research doesn’t actually suggest these police do much to stop school shootings from occurring.

“That’s one of the maybe disappointing takeaways and very important takeaways, given that that’s some of the justification and reason many schools are using police,” he said. “In some ways, it resonates with what we know anecdotally. You can look at Parkland right here in Florida. They had an SRO in the school and it didn’t deter and didn’t effectively stop the perpetrator from taking a lot of lives.”

Researchers analyzing school shootings between 1999 and 2018 found that the presence of SROs on campus makes no observable difference in stopping the severity of a given shooting. Another team found that the presence of school police may actually make things worse. Hamline University criminal justice professor Jillian Peterson looked at 40 years worth of school shootings, covering 133 incidents from the 20 years before and after 1999’s Columbine massacre, and found that there were three times as many people killed during these events when there was an armed office on the scene.

Explanations for these trends vary. Some suggest that school shooters arm themselves more heavily if they know they’ll face armed police. Others speculate that those in a mental state to carry out a school shooting simply don’t care that they could be shot by an armed officer. There’s also the fact that, according to Prof Curran, police in schools are often outgunned by school shooters, and only accurately shoot back about a third of the time under high stress.

“Even highly trained people may not be effective at neutralising the threat immediately,” he said.

What the research does show, however, is that school police mirror larger trends in the criminal justice system, and focus disproportionate attention, and at times violence, on students of colour.

Researchers at the University of Albany and RAND Corporate found in 2021 that SROs don’t effectively prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents, but increase the use of suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and criminal arrests — punishments directed at Black students two times more often than white ones.

Other research indicates schools with SROs see a decrease in high school graduation and college enrollment rates, while Black students experience the largest increase in discipline.

According to the US Department of Education, Black students without disabilities made up 30 per cent of school-related arrests in 2017, twice their share of the public school population, while white students were comparatively under-represented. The Center for Public Integrity, meanwhile, has found that in 46 states, Black students are referred to law enforcement at higher rates than all students, even though no US state has a majority Black population.

Research also suggests Black girls in particular face even worse disproportionate punishment by school police.

That’s just in the aggregate. One interaction with police can change the trajectory of a young student’s life, as portrayed in the 2021 documentary On These Grounds, about a 2015 viral video of a school resource officer in Columbia, South Carolina, violently arresting a girl in class.

On 15 October, 2015, Spring Valley High School school resource officer Ben Fields was called into a math class to remove Shakara Murphy, who was supposedly misbehaving. Video captures the officer briefly asking Ms Murphy to stand up. When she remains in her chair, seconds later he flips her backward over the chair, then hurling her across the room before kneeling on top of her and arresting her, leaving her with rug burn on her face and a hairline facture in her wrist.

Another student, Niya Kenny, who filmed the encounter and challenge Mr Fields’s use of force, was also arrested and temporarily sent to an adult jail.

“I was in disbelief. I know this girl got nobody. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I’ve never seen nothing like that in my life, a man use so much force on a little girl, a big man like, 300 pounds of full muscle. I was like no way, no way, you can’t do that to a little girl,” she told local news at the time.

Both girls were booked under an archaic early 1900s “disturbing schools” law that made it a misdemeanour to disturb school in any way. The law has roots in the Jim Crow South, when it was first introduced to prevent flirting with white women at a women’s college, and was later used to quell civil rights protests in schools in the 1960s.

What was missing from the video, and in the minds of many critics, from the whole situation, was a larger context or any sense that extreme force shouldn’t be used on a teenager simply because she wouldn’t stand up out of a desk.

The incident began when Ms Murphy, a foster child, got in a disagreement with her teacher, who was barring her from accessing her legally protected school disability assistance plan during a math test. Officer Fields, a hulking powerlifter, actually knew about Ms Murphy and her background, and had stopped other students from picking on her in the past. That didn’t stop him from tossing her across the room like a sack of trash.

“What was going on in his mind that he had to throw me like that?” Ms Murphy told filmmakers in On These Grounds. “I want other kids to be able to go to school, get their education, and be safe and feel like that’s not going to happen to them.”

Both Ms Murphy and Ms Kenny, as is typical with many students who face police discipline, never returned to Spring Valley High School.

Ben Fields, who was fired after the incident but did not face any criminal charges, argues he wasn’t being racist, and that he was actually following department use-of-force policy.

In the chaos of the arrest, Ms Murphy said she reached out to find a handhold, accidentally striking the school resource officer in the face. The former officer, who is white, interpreted it as an intentional punch, which would’ve entitled him to use a baton or an attack dog against Ms Murphy, who is Black, according to a department use-of-force memo at the time.

“If I had took out a baton and hit her with it, does that look good? If I had called a canine on her, does that look good? What is this, 1960?” Mr Fields says in the film. “I did what I thought was best in the situation, based on my training.”

He also told filmmakers the so-called “schools-to-prison pipeline,” a concept popularised by scholars like Michelle Alexander, is “one of the biggest hoaxes I’ve ever heard of.”

At the time of the viral video, according to the ACLU, 71 per cent of students in South Carolina referred to the Department of Juvenile Justice were Black, a rate nearly three times greater than their share of the overall population. Spring Valley’s arrests of students had an even higher percentage of African-Americans, an astonishing 88 per cent.

Activists like Vivian Anderson, founder of EveryBlackGirl, a group that supports young Black women in the face of police violence and other forms of discrimination, say schools should prioritize counseling and other social services over policing.

“These are two girls. What happens when we start pushing young people out of school? We know what it means to silence trauma. That’s how we get all our -isms. Our alcoholism, all our addictions,” she says in the documentary about Spring Valley. “This should never happen to any child.”

In 2019 the ACLU has estimated that millions of children in US public schools have police on school grounds, but no access to a social worker, mental health counselor, or nurse.

There are some in Washington who are trying to change this resource gap.

In June, a group of Democrats in Congress introduced the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act, which would shift federal resources away from police and towards more social services.

“Since Columbine, our country has approached the problem of school shootings by funding school police,” Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said at a June hearing. “A billion dollars, thousands of school police officers — when 90% of our students can’t access a school nurse or social worker or guidance counselor — and more than two decades later, we find ourselves in the same spot as before. Only in America.”

As Professor Curran, the University of Florida researcher, points out, school police are only a recent invention in the US. If schools can shift so much to accommodate them, it follows that schools can change in other ways if people decide school policing is not living up to its promises.

“We have a history of having schools without police,” he said.

His personal view, after having worked with parents, schools, and officers themselves, is that it’s a highly nuanced issue, and one where community control is vital. That would factor in historical experiences between communities and police, he says.

“It’s perfectly possible to imagine a world in which schools have no police for many nationwide,” he said.

It’s possible, but after another summer of school shooting tragedies, it remains to be seen whether it’s likely.

US education authorities defends elementary school for setting up after-school Satan club

Friday, 14 Jan 2022 02:15 PM MYT
BY SYLVIA LOOI

Parents in Illinois, United States are up in arms after an elementary school is setting up an after- school Satan Club. — Picture via Facebook

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 14 — Education authorities in Illinois, United States, are defending an elementary school after flyers promoting an after-school Satan club surfaced.

In a statement, the Moline-Coal Valley School District No 40 superintendent Dr Rachel Savage said the club does not involve any teachers from the school where the club is being held.

The flyers “were not distributed to all students” and facility rental for the club was not and “is not affiliated with the school or the district”, Newsweek reported.

Savage added that the idea for the club originally came from a parent within the district and the parent took it upon themselves and reached out to the national organisation behind the club.

The parent mentioned to the organisation that they were looking to bring other viewpoints to the school.

Additionally, the superintendent cited that it would have been illegal to reject the organisation “to pay to rent their publicly funded institution” after-school, as it would have subjected the school district to a discrimination lawsuit.

The district said other religious entities have used its facilities in the past.

Savage also pointed out the district also has a Good News Christian Club, among other after- school clubs that require parent permission before participation.

Her response came after a flyer about the club at Jane Addams Elementary went viral on social media.

According to the flyer, the club aims to teach children “benevolence and empathy, critical thinking, problem solving, creative expression and personal sovereignty”.

The handout also said that “the after-school Satan Club does not attempt to convert children to any religious ideology. Instead, The Satanic Temple supports children to think for themselves”.

According to the flyer, the club is scheduled to meet at the school for an hour once a month.

On its website, the Satanic Temple said the After-School Satan Clubs “meet at select public schools where Good News Clubs also operate” and is an open environment where parents are welcomed.

Illinois district defends offering ‘After School Satan Club’ at elementary school
By Patrick Reilly
January 14, 2022 

Rachel Savage, Moline-Coal Valley Schools Superintendent, says the flyer prompted a response from district leadership, who emphatically assured parents that "No teachers from Jane Addams is involved."

Moline Schools

An Illinois school district is defending an elementary school offering “After School Satan Club,” an extracurricular educational program sponsored by the Satanic Temple of the United States.

The program, for children in grades first through fifth, will be taught by volunteers at The Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline, and will meet five times this year beginning Thursday, flyers circulating on social media claim.

According to the flyer, the club will consist of science projects, puzzles, games, arts and crafts and outdoor nature activities. The club says it will help children learn benevolence and empathy, critical thinking, problem solving, creative expression and personal sovereignty.

The Satanic Temple – essentially an activist group and think tank more than a religious institution – said the program is available at select public schools where Good News programs exist, and is meant to be educationally enriching. Members have no intention of converting children to Satanism.

“Proselytization is not our goal, and we’re not interested in converting children to Satanism,” the temple says about the program on its website. “After School Satan Clubs will focus on free inquiry and rationalism, the scientific basis for which we know what we know about the world around us.

An Illinois school district is defending an elementary school providing an “After School Satan Club,” an extracurricular educational program.Jane Adams Elementary School/Fac

“We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of everlasting other-worldly horrors.”

The flyer prompted a response from district leadership, who emphatically assured parents that “No teachers from Jane Addams, or any other district teacher, is involved” and “Flyers were not distributed to all students,” according to a letter from Rachel Savage, Moline-Coal Valley Schools Superintendent, to district families.

She said that the space rental was “not generated by the district and is not affiliated with Jane Addams or the district.”

A district parent had reached out to the Satanic Temple’s after school club, and told the group that the elementary school already offered a “child evangelism fellowship club” and wanted to bring their program to the school “to offer parents a choice of different viewpoints,” the superintendent said.

Thirty flyers were sent to the school from the Satanic Temple and were placed in the school lobbies, as are all flyers for organizations and events at the school that are “religious in nature.”

She further noted that the board of education permits community usage of its facilities, and approves several agreements with local churches.

The flyer says the club will consist of science projects, puzzles, and more

 — as it aims to help children learn critical thinking and problem-solving.

Patrick Deaton/Facebook

“To illegally deny their organization (viewpoint) to pay to rent our publicly funded institution, after school hours, subjects the district to a discrimination lawsuit, which we will not win, likely taking thousands upon thousands of tax-payer dollars away from our teachers, staff, and classrooms,” Savage wrote.

The Satanic Temple says it views Satan as a “mythical figure representing individual freedom,” according to its website.

“Satanists should actively work to hone critical thinking and exercise reasonable agnosticism in all things,” the temple says. “Our beliefs must be malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world — never the reverse.”

RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL FILM

Île-à-la-Crosse Survivors Still Waiting

Story by The Canadian Press

 • 

Métis children along with First Nations children were subjected to the forcible attendance at residential schools in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Métis survivors, however, are in some cases, still fighting for the recognition and acknowledgment of what they experienced and the intergenerational impact they have borne. Chronicling the lives and struggles of Île-à-la-Crosse (ILEX) Residential School Survivors, a short film, Waiting for Justice, has been named the 2024 Best History Film at the Toronto Documentary Festival and is also being screened as part of the Toronto Short Film Festival. Waiting for Justice was co-produced with the full support of Métis Nation– Saskatchewan (MN–S) in 2023. Métis filmmaker Matt LeMay said, “Working on this project with our Indigenous Geographic team (Kaily Kay, Crystal Martin, and Derek Robitaille) was a profound honour. We wholeheartedly commit to supporting the Île-à-la-Crosse Survivors and their community until justice is rightfully served.” 

Despite being one of the oldest boarding schools in the country, the ILEX (I-le-Crosse) Residential School has never been formally recognized as such, or its Survivors compensated by the Federal or Provincial Government. ILEX Survivor, Louis Gardiner is part of a class action lawsuit filed against Canada and Saskatchewan in 2022. As one of the Survivors featured in ‘Waiting for Justice’, Gardiner said he has mixed emotions about the award, “On one hand, it’s a difficult film for us to watch but it’s something we felt necessary to be a part of to keep our stories alive and apply pressure on the appropriate governments and institutions to reach a settlement before all of our Survivors are lost.” 

The first Catholic mission was established in Île-à-la-Crosse in 1783. The initial School at ILEX was a day school opened by the Oblates' Roman Catholic Mission in 1847. In 1860, the Sisters of Charity, also known as the Grey Nuns arrived and transformed the School into a boarding/residential school. Nine girls and six boys comprised the first class of resident students. In 1874, a new school building was built on the site and the School became known as Notre-Dame-du-Sacre-Coeur. The School received federal funding in 1875 and 1876 but was denied further federal funding since it lay outside of Treaty Six territory, and Treaty Ten had not yet been signed. Nevertheless, in 1880, then-Prime Minister John A. Macdonald described the Île-à-la-Crosse School as one of four federal “Indian schools” that set the standard for other educational facilities. 

In 1901, the Mission grounds were flooded and by 1905, the poor living conditions led the Grey Nuns to leave the ILEX School. The school was relocated in 1906 to the nearby community of Lac la Plonge, where it was known as Beauval or St. Bruno's. Beauval eventually became a formally recognized Indian Residential School and its students were included in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. In 1917, the Grey Nuns returned to Île-à-la-Crosse and Father Marius Rossignol reopened the School. Because the Mission managed the day-to-day operations of both schools, the two schools quickly became companion institutions. The Mission took in Aboriginal students from across Northern Saskatchewan, then sent the First Nations students to Beauval and the Métis students to the ILEX School. Because this system was never strictly enforced, however, a considerable number of Métis students attended Beauval, and a considerable number of First Nations students attended the ILEX School. Between 1917 and 1945, the Grey Nuns and the Mission conducted the day-to-day operations of the Île-à-la-Crosse School, while Canada provided funds for the School's operations. The Mission also continued to operate Beauval during this period and frequently shared federally funded resources between Beauval and the ILEX School, including supplies and staff who traveled back and forth between the two schools. The Mission staff (who also managed the operation of the Beauval School for First Nations students) and ILEX School administrators and staff (who were often also Beauval administrators and staff) treated the two schools interchangeably for purposes of compelling mandatory attendance. Although the Indian Act did not apply to Métis people, the Mission and School staff nevertheless informed nearby families and communities that it was mandatory for Métis children to attend the Île-à-la-Crosse School, and threatened forcible removal of their children if they did not comply.

In 1945, the Saskatchewan Department of Education officially assumed the administration of the Île-à-la-Crosse School. (Court File Number: KBG 1263-2022; Statement of Claim Gardner v. Canada; united4survivors.ca)

For more than one hundred years, Métis children were forcibly taken from their family homes and made to attend the Catholic institution. While there, they too were subjected to violence and abuse. The youngest survivors of the Île-à-la-Crosse Residential School are now in their fifties and the oldest are in their late nineties. The Metis survivors of residential schools are calling for the same supports as First Nations survivors to move themselves forward, …the recognition and acknowledgment of what happened to them, a settlement, and a healing fund.

Backed by Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S), the survivors have started a class action to spur both governments to join them at the table to negotiate a resolution that includes a recognition of the harms suffered at the school, failing which the class action will be litigated in court. The Île-à-la-Crosse Boarding School Steering Committee Inc. is comprised of twelve board members representing twenty communities in Northwest Saskatchewan. The committee has been actively advocating for Survivors of the Île-à-la-Crosse Boarding School for over twenty years. Founding members of the committee include Antoinette Lafleur, Emile Janvier, Margaret Aubichon, and Duane Favel. On July 19, 2019, the Île-à-la-Crosse Boarding School Steering Committee, the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, and the Government of Canada signed a Memorandum of Understanding for Île-à-la-Crosse Exploratory Discussions.

In the MOU, Canada acknowledged that Île-à-la-Crosse School Survivors were excluded from the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), and all the groups involved agreed on a framework for “Exploratory Discussions.” These were preliminary discussions about what might be involved in negotiating a settlement for the Survivors. The Exploratory Discussions never got past the preliminary stages, and no settlement was reached with Canada. After the IRSSA was signed in 2006, requests could be made to add schools to the school list. The request to add the Île-à-la-Crosse School was denied, because Canada said that the School was run by the Mission, and not by the federal government, and it was not an “Indian” residential school. The Daniels Supreme Court decision that confirmed that Métis people are aboriginal people to whom the Federal Government owed a fiduciary duty was not decided until 2016, a decade after the IRSSA was signed.

The MOU is still in place. Now that the Gardiner Action has started, the lawyers will continue to work to try to settle with Canada and will encourage Saskatchewan to join this settlement effort. The lawyers, however, will not delay the court proceedings in the Gardiner Action while negotiations are underway because it is important not to further delay resolution. The Île-à-la-Crosse Boarding School Steering Committee and the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan are collaborating with the plaintiffs named in the Gardiner Action to help with the prosecution of the claim.

In 2005, the Merchant Law Group started a proposed class action on behalf of the Île-à-la-Crosse School Survivors. The Merchant lawsuit has never moved forward and has not even been certified as a class action. Almost all of the surviving plaintiffs from the Merchant lawsuit have fired Merchant Law Group and hired Waddell Phillips. These former Merchant clients all support the new Gardiner Action and want it to go forward as the only class action for the Île-à-la-Crosse School Survivors. The Gardiner plaintiffs will request that the Court “stay” the Merchant lawsuit, meaning that the Merchant action will be put to a stop by the court so that only the Gardiner Action will proceed. 

On November 9, 2023, Justice Bardai, the Gardiner Action case management judge, decided that the application to stay the Merchant lawsuit needed to be brought before a different judge, Justice Keene, who was appointed to case manage the Merchant lawsuit. Justice Bardai also said that the Gardiner Action could move forward to certification, regardless of the status of the other action.

In 1964, the boys' dormitory burned down and had to be rebuilt. At that time, there were 331 students at the School, about 100 of whom were resident students. Eight years later fire broke out again at the school which led to it being shut down. Although the building was rebuilt in 1976, the Saskatchewan Department of Education transferred the administration of the school to a locally run school board that year, and the residential school closed its doors. In total, approximately 1,500 Métis and First Nations students attended the Île-à-la-Crosse School between 1860 and 1972 from many communities across Northern Saskatchewan including Clear Lake, Old Lady's Point, Buckley's Point, Dore Lake, Sled Lake, Green Lake, Jans Bay, Cole Bay, Beauval, Patuanak, Pine House Lake, Sapwagamik, Canoe River, Buffalo Narrows, St. Georges Hill, Michel Village, Turner Lake, Bear Creek, Black Point, Descharme Lake, Garson Lake and La Loche.

MN–S is working diligently to host its own screenings of Waiting for Justice in various regions of Saskatchewan, specifically in ILEX. Once secured, communities will be invited to attend. You can watch the eighteen-minute award-winning short now at Indigenous Geographic, https://indigenousgeographic.ca/ourwork. As has been said of the Holocaust survivors, the Metis residential school survivors went on and made lives for themselves the best they could. They lost their language, families, roots, and sense of belonging, all at the same time…behind the doors of the Île-à-la-Crosse Residential School.

Carol Baldwin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Wakaw Recorder