Update On All Things City of Dublin and Dublin City Schools

A law lacking enforcement isn’t actually a law. It’s mere words on a page.

Dublin Needs to Crack Down on Teen Boys Putting Walkers at Risk

After dinner each night, I go for a three-mile walk as the experts say I should. When I walk, I intentionally hug the right side of the pathway to ensure bikers and joggers can easily slip past me. Last Tuesday around 7:00pm on one of those walks from Amberleigh to the roundabout at Brand Road, two boys came speeding past me on their e-bikes. They came so close to hitting me that my clothes actually rippled as they sped by. Given how wide the pathway is, the close call was 100% intentional by the boys. Like the idiots on social media who ride bikes doing wheelies where they try to scare people by getting as close to them as possible before veering away, they think it is cool or funny to do fly-bys on walkers.

This intentionally reckless conduct is clearly happening everywhere, as the article above about Orange County, California, demonstrates. This incident wasn’t the first time. It has happened over a dozen times at least. Dublin’s police and city attorney need to crack down on this conduct immediately. It is only a matter of time before one of these reckless boys actually clips or runs over a walker, resulting in serious injury or, God forbid, death, as happened in Orange County. As for me, should one of these boys clip me, their parents better have deep pockets and good insurance, including a high umbrella policy, as I (or my estate) will sue them to high hell for my injuries or worse. I’ve worked hard to get and remain healthy into my mid-50s, I’m not about to let some reckless boy take out my spleen, kidney, or Achilles doing his stupid stunt. Parents, teach your privileged punk kids to be good and do right, not be spoiled brats on bikes. Dublin also should be prepared to be sued because the lack of enforcement on these boys running amok is something they are aware of and clearly are doing too little to curb.

Dublin Also Needs to Enforce the State Law on 16-year-old Drivers With More Than One Non-Relative In the Car

It gets exhausting always being the one parent who enforces the law or adopts smart parenting policies with their kids. I can’t tell you how many times my kids have told me that I am “the only parent who does that” with “that” being whatever law or best policy is at issue. At first, it centered on (a) getting a smartphone and (b) being allowed to use addictive social media apps. I held out on both of those items for as long as I could (8th grade and 9th grade, respectively), but still wish I could have held out even longer. Not one study has come out showing teenagers and those younger NEED smartphones or social media accounts. It is entirely a peer pressure issue driven by parents who want to be liked versus respected.

Now, with my last kid on the cusp of driving, it is a state law that restricts how many friends can be in the car during the first year of driving. The law is one non-relative. The reason for this law, as any parent who pays attention knows, is that the collective IQ of teenagers drops as you add more teens to the mix. Having a buddy next to you in the car isn’t nearly as distracting as having one or two more in the back seat goofing around or trying to show some social media post on their smartphone to front seat passengers, including the driver, because waiting five more minutes is just too long. I’m getting hit with the “you’re the only parent” jibe, which I don’t think is right. All parents care; some just don’t want to say no to their kids.

I’ve told my son if I ever catch him driving more than one friend or see him in a car with more than one kid, he will lose access to his car for a week. He wasn’t pleased. I explained to him that it wasn’t my rule, but actual state law. I tried to get him to appreciate that I’m just trying to keep him safe. I explained that if he got into an accident with more than one kid in his car and injured or, God forbid, killed someone, his violation of the law would be prima facie evidence of recklessness and subject his mother and me to personal liability. I’m hoping he doesn’t take the risk.

It would be nice if Dublin police enforced the law by issuing tickets to a few teens breaking the law. Word would spread quickly in Dublin forcing parents to obey the law instead of placating their kids. They should do a check at the entrances of each high school in the morning like a sobriety checkpoint. All three high schools also should reinforce the law and possible consequences to every student and parent in their schools, so the number of violators declines. The safety of our kids and the rest of us on the roads should always be the primary focus. Today, it isn’t.

And, yes, you can call me a Karen. As they say, e-bikes and cars driven with too many kids can break my bones, but words can never hurt me:-)

On a related note, why doesn’t the Dublin Police enforce the laws on handling smartphones while driving or tinted windows? I’m amazed at how many people I see driving with their smartphones in plain view and how many cars you can’t see into because the tinting is far beyond the legal limit. A law lacking enforcement isn’t actually a law. It’s mere words on a page. Oh well...

Dublin City Schools Gets Sued by the Neighborhoods Getting Moved from Coffman High School to Scioto High School Under the New Redistricting Plan

A couple weeks ago, families of students from Thomas Elementary filed a formal administrative complaint against Dublin City Schools (DCS) over being redistricted from Coffman High School to Scioto High School. The complaint claims that the redistricting criteria was used selectively by DCS resulting in a disparate impact on racial and national origin students. Per NBC4:

The complaint was submitted on behalf of families by the Ballymead Civic Association, Monahan Homeowners Association, Llewellyn Farms Civic Association and Shannon Heights Civic Association

…

The families are asking Dublin City Schools to pause implementation of the new boundary for their community, conduct an independent investigation, reconsider the area’s high school assignment and release additional maps, data and records from the redistricting process.

In an interview when asked if DCS was being racist, their attorney, Gregory Vincent, expressly rejected that redistricting was intentionally done discriminatorily; rather, he stated:

I think that’s [] a bridge too far. I do believe though that the impact of these decision-making have this potentially discriminatory effect...I am not going to accuse anyone of intentionally discriminating against. I think that there’s no evidence of that. But the [] impact of the decisions is having this adverse impact.

Llewellyn Farms resident Rich Wicker believes DCS discriminated because his kids would now not get to go to high school with their cousins. Wicker did not appear to be from a racial minority group. DCS denies the allegations (not the cousins part).

Based on Vincent’s own statements, the complaint should be dead on arrival. In light of language in the U.S. Supreme Court’s per curiam decision in Allen v. Milligran, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have shifted away from disparate impact cases finding that actual intent is required in discrimination cases and requiring defendants to change neutral practices to fix statistical disparities violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Thus, DCS has the winning hand.

For what its worth, most of the people in the neighborhoods north of Brand Road don’t belong to a country club, as Wicker suggested in the NBC4 interview. Those who do mostly only have pool memberships for their kids in the summer.

On a side note, when I discussed this compliant on The Bruce Hooley Show, some lawyer listening in his car later took the time to find an email for me so he could email me a YouTube clip with no note on how “disparate” is said correctly. Beyond the fact that the clip came from a United Kingdom speaker, after litigating disparate impact cases during my undefeated legal career and being the top student in my law school class at Ohio State in employment law, I’m fairly confident I know how to say the word. A quick search of the lawyer revealed he did both undergraduate and law school at Notre Dame, which explains why he would take the time to send such an obnoxious email. Domers...If I had to bet, I’d also peg him as a St. Charles Preparatory High School graduate since obnoxiousness is in the water they drink at that school (with all due respect to my St. Paul brethren and nephew who went there, as I’m a St. Francis DeSales High School Class of 1989 graduate:-)

P.S. For the last eight or so years, I’ve been a loyal fan of the futbol club, Manchester City. I became a fan when Pep Guardiola left my other team, Bayern Munich, to coach ManCity in 2016. During those years, I’ve probably listened to and/or watched 90% of ManCity matches. With news that they will be found guilty of violating English Premier League rules on 114 out of 115 charges, I have to swallow the bitter medicine that comes with cheating. In this case, it likely means repealing all of the various titles they won during the years in question. relegation to a lower league, and potential bankruptcy given the intent of other teams to sue ManCity for revenue losses. I feel terrible for the players and coaches who had nothing to do with the charges against ManCity. I will remain a loyal fan regardless. I’d be a hypocrite otherwise, as I publicly called for the Houston Astros to forfeit their World Series Championship stolen from my Los Angeles Dodgers in 2017 when they cheated by stealing signs and for the University of Michigan to forfeit all of its wins, including the National Championship win, for also cheating by stealing signs. The entire basis of sports rests on playing by the rules and allowing merit to determine winners and losers. Cheating, whether it is stealing signs or inflating revenues to permit more spending on players, undermines the integrity of the game. I hope ManCity prevails on appeal and proves that what it did was permissible, but, if it doesn’t, the punishments should fit the crimes. In this case, other teams and players lost titles and income. They need to be made whole.