I live in the pine barrens of New Jersey, in an economically depressed little town with lots of homeless folk, no nearby shopping or otherwise fun activities, and apparently increasing gang activity. Why the heck a gang would want to come here is beyond me. My youngest says the gangs are a bunch of bored kids coming together to try and be cool. The newspaper says the recruiters are coming here from Trenton.

Well, anyway...there have been a couple of shootings since the holidays. One man was killed in November and a couple was shot up on New Year's Eve. The police say the incidents are "gang related".

At the same time, there's been an increasing number of "lockdowns" at the high school. A lockdown is the school district's response to a perceived threat, terroristic or otherwise. It's a scary thing to me. During a lockdown, you cannot come and get your kid out of school. Nine times out of ten, parents aren't notified until after the fact that there has been a lockdown.

Some bright bulb has been leaving threatening messages on the walls of the bathrooms. The administrators aren't specific about the threats. They could be bomb threats or gang threats or the "I'm going to bring a gun to school and kill you all" type of threats.

The school's response has been to go into lockdown. Heavily armed cops show up to search all the students, their lockers, their backpacks and their musical instruments (yes, the youngest has had her saxophone searched). It's time consuming and costs a lot of money so the brilliant administrators have come up to a solution: lock all the bathrooms except for 4. Two upstairs and two downstairs.

Kids are not allowed to go between classes. They have to go one at a time and they have to be signed in and out of the bathroom by monitors. There are hundreds of kids...is this really going to work? The policy started on February 1st.

It's not going to solve anything. It's going to inconvenience and punish the kids and drive the teachers crazy. I guess that's the point?