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As a young teacher at Riverview Middle School entering my third year in the classroom back in 1994, I knew—despite my inexperience—what the number one problem of the perpetually underperforming Memphis City Schools was: the deviant, dysfunctional, disrespectful, indecent and even criminal behavior exhibited daily by a large percentage of the students. In a guest column I wrote for The Commercial Appeal at the time, I called for the school system to expel these “non-students,” for whom normal behavior is a rare occurrence and appears to be an alien concept.

Twelve years later, do I still feel the same? Yes, more than ever!  Several superintendents and their various “innovative” strategies to improve the system have not worked.  The No Child Left Behind Act makes demands that are impossible to achieve at many schools; the horrible conduct of the “non-students” will not allow for such.  The much-heralded Blue Ribbon Plan has done nothing to stem the tidal wave of dysfunction and counterproductivity heaped upon teachers (and “real” students) each day.  The recent decision to hire adults to monitor school hallways will do little, if anything, to alter the chaotic climate at many of the city’s middle and high schools.

Simply put, the Memphis City Schools (MCS) system has a thug problem.  Now, I do hear the collective “Duh!” from readers of this column and many other MCS teachers, but therein lies the problem: an awareness and even acceptance of this disturbing fact. I refuse to accept this fact.

The Blue Ribbon Plan is an utter failure.  Spending precious funds to force a teacher to kiss the backside of the Crip who just called the teacher a “weak-a– b-tch”—or in my case, a “bald white motherf—er”—is demeaning and makes a mockery of a school’s purpose.  The disciplinary policies of MCS have no teeth, and the numerous ne’er-do-wells wandering (literally) the halls know it.  The entire system and its “enlightened” policies are a joke and in dire need of re-evaluation, if not total demolition.

Just this school year, I have been called the aforementioned slur and have been told to “f—k off” because I had the temerity to insist a school rule be obeyed.  In years past, I had one student threaten to shoot me, and my vehicle was vandalized.  I have caught “non-students” engaged in drug deals, craps games and even sex. I have seen a 5-3, 70-pound boy traipse down the hall, his pistol cupped in his hand.  Parents have cussed me out.  Because class-cutting and profanity are so prevalent, teachers have been told to ignore it.  “Everything must be done to keep the children in the classroom,” I have been told—even those young people who view school as little more than a place to eat free and socialize.

Instead of extracting the money of taxpayers and wasting it on initiatives such as the Blue Ribbon Plan, I suggest that school board members shell out a few bucks each at Amazon.com to buy Joe Clark’s book “Laying Down the Law.”  Subject of the film “Lean on Me,” Clark writes in his book: “There is no way I am going to allow 75 to 110 non-learners to destroy the learning environment for the other 3,000 students.”

The chaos that existed at Clark’s Eastside High School in New Jersey can now be found in the public schools of Memphis.

Teachers, principals and school police officers know who the thugs are; they know who the gang members are; they know who the overage underachievers are.  Why do we act as if these “non-students” will somehow morph into well-behaved scholars overnight?  Shouldn’t the taxpayers get a return on and some accountability for the over $6,000 that MCS spends each year on each of its students?  Why should teachers be forced to dedicate so much class time and attention to people who could not care less?

Schools should not be baby-sitting services or psychiatric clinics for the many 16- and 17-year-old eighth- and ninth-grade “criminals in training.”  The time has long passed to expel the “non-students” whose mere presence destroys the day-to-day learning of anyone near them. Enough is enough.  Show them the door, shake their hands and wish them luck in prison.

Because a child is of school age does not necessarily mean he or she is school material.  Laws that mandate attendance should be repealed.  Laws that give special education kids carte blanche to raise hell without consequence need serious revision.  It is time for tough love and common sense to marry in the union of permanent—meaning forever—expulsions.

I realize my suggestions, if enacted, would invite some lawyers to take up the cause of parents with dollar signs in their eyes.  To these lawyers, I have one question: Would you allow your son or daughter to sit in a class next to the innocent little darling (who is also a drug-dealing, gun-toting, drive-by-shooting Vice Lord) for whom you are advocating?

William K. Richardson teaches 10th-grade English at Frayser High School.  This article originally appeared in the Commercial Appeal and on Teacher Talk Nevada.  Contact Richardson at coachwkr at aim dot com.