Public Schools Have Earned Our Support

Perhaps you saw the story about the 19-year-old who tried to use a stolen credit card with the name of the Spokane County coroner on it to get money at an Idaho Indian casino.

As police tell it, the kid had obtained a stolen credit card with the name Dexter Amend on the front.

One Dexter Amend is the 78-year-old Spokane County coroner.

The coroner also has a son, Dexter Jr., who is 55.

The family says neither father nor son has ever set foot in the casino.

The 19-year-old didn’t have a clue about this. All he had was a hare-brained idea and the stolen card.

He phonied up an ID by putting “Dexter Amend” next to a picture of himself, then tried to get $800 from a casino cashier.

At the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Bingo Casino, cashier Lora Neville rather quickly decided that the 19-year-old wearing a baseball cap and sweat shirt was neither the 78-year-old county coroner nor his 55-year-old son.

“I’ve been working at the casino long enough to know most of the customers and this kid wasn’t one of them,” Neville said.

“This kid was an amateur. He thought he could get away with something, and he couldn’t.”

After a brief chase in a stolen car, police found the kid hiding under a crib at a friend’s house.

So much for a brilliant life of crime.

Cashier Neville couldn’t believe the stupidity of the scam.

“When you are that age I guess you really don’t understand that somebody like me who is 47 knows a little bit about the world,” she said.

“He was really trying to look calm, like he knew what he was doing. But I used to be a bartender. I’ve checked a lot of IDs,” she explained of her suspicion about the credit card and fake ID card. “On top of that, I used to live in Spokane and knew the name, Dexter Amend.”

A mother of a teenager, Lora Neville offered a bit of casino philosophy. “A kid like this is just so immature. He hasn’t lived through a lot of experience in life. He’s not using the brain that he has.”

This incident reminded me of why all of us need to support public schools and urge, no, demand that even borderline kids attend them.

The reason is simply that kids are stupid.

As in air-headed. As in short-sighted, self-centered and sophomoric.

Kids need to be educated, domesticated and sophisticated.

Preferably, this education will take place before they turn 18 become eligible to vote, fight and be adults in the eyes of the world.

Education and a dose of good sense need to take root before somebody dreams up the bright idea of trying to pose as a well-known person to get cash at a casino. The idea of hard work wasn’t present in the mind of this 19-year-old.

Schools can’t undo every hare-brained scheme or capture the attention of every distracted adolescent. Parents have a role to play in this.

If the parents aren’t present or aren’t thinking about this stuff, however, the schools can play a big, big role in straightening out some very crooked ideas.

A kid in school will be exposed to people who come to work every day, people with long-term plans, people striving to do something other than be con artists.

I’m not sure where the kid who tried to scam $800 from Dexter Amend’s stolen credit card went to high school, or even if he did. And I would bet that parents thinking about such a kid might worry about the bad influences that would exist in a school where such a kid did attend.

It’s possible that somebody like this could affect their little darlings, just as it is possible that something less than perfect may be taught in school.

But I think it important to consider that it’s also possible the good kids in school might influence the little hellions and that this possibility far outweighs the downside of turning against the schools.

There are many noble reasons to support public schools. You support the public schools so kids can have a chance to go to college, participate in extracurricular activities, learn about computers.

These are all good civic reasons to support schools and are usually the reasons cited by good, civic-minded parents when they vote to support school bonds and levies.

But there is something else that schools do that often isn’t articulated but is very important these days.

Schools need to be supported because they remain one of the last, best places where kids on the fringe can hang around people who aren’t.

In particular, older citizens who may not have children in school need to recognize this benefit.

And, conservatives who sometimes take issue with elements of public school curriculum also should take note: For all their flaws, public schools can, and do, help many kids struggling to find their way.

In the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene metropolis, public schools continue to be the place where most parents send their children.

Rich and poor, teacher’s pets and troublemakers mostly show up at the first bell to be educated.

They need it.

And they need taxpayers and voters to recognize the need through support at the polls.

, DataTimes