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Bill more than feel-good exercise for politicians

Editor: Re: New school year has even more changes than usual, Monday editorial, Times.

First let me say, with all due respect, I wish the author would have called me to get my thoughts on the bill I had a large part in writing to find out the intent before just espousing the concerns by some who do not understand what the intent of the bill was. Who better to ask than the ones who wrote it?

Readers need to know that School Board Chairwoman Pat Deutschman has not talked to me about the bill or asked me what the intent of the bill was, either.

Second, I am compelled to write to express my sadness to a sentiment that was attributed to Mrs. Deutschman: What is the intent of this new law? To keep away sexual predators? Or is it simply a feel-good law for the politicians and the public?

That view is unbelievable. First of all, everything about the bill is to keep away sexual predators from our children.

I cannot imagine a School Board member who lives in the very same county that was hit so hard by the horrifying events of what happened to Jessica Lunsford, and then another horrible incident that occurred not too far away, to not have heard the tremendous outcry from the public to the Legislature demanding that we tighten the loopholes that could enable a sexual predator to get at our children. The entire Legislature heard them.

Also attributed to Mrs. Deutschman is the comment that, to her knowledge, there has never been an incident at a Florida school in which a vendor attacked a student.

I am not willing to wait for a child to be attacked to close as many loopholes as I can find to prevent a sexual predator from getting to a child. Is she really willing to take that chance?

This legislation is not targeting vendors. It is about anyone who is allowed closeness to our children.

I remind Mrs. Deutschman that the dirt bag John Couey (who has been charged with the abduction and murder of Jessica Lunsford) worked at the very same school that Jessica attended. He may not have attacked anyone then, but I am sure not happy that he was there, and who knows what he did or could have done?

If Mrs. Deutschman thinks that our bill was just a feel-good law for politicians and the public, the same law that puts child sexual predators away for a minimum of 25 years, gets them off the streets where you don't have to worry if they registered or if they live next door to you, and enables us to track those out in the community and enacts stricter screening of those who are have access to our children, and does so much more, then all I can say is that I and many people out in the community feel very good about what we worked so hard to accomplish.

[Last modified August 10, 2005, 17:50:26]