Another School Shooting
Sadly, on August 27, 2025, the Washington Post reported on another school shooting. This one at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota killed two students and injured seventeen.
Everyday across America, families send their daughters and sons to school. Those families trust that their cherished daughters and sons will come back home.
Too frequently in America, that trust is violated. Children aren’t supposed to come home in a body bag.
There is something wrong with a country whose innocent school students continue to be murdered in alleged safe settings.
No matter our legislation, school rules, intruder drills, and school security officers, we are unsuccessful in preventing school shootings.
I spent over thirty-one years working in education. In my career, I had experience working in public, private, and department of correction schools.
As different as those school environments were, none were immune from disruptive behaviors from students. In those unique school settings, I kept coming back to a recurring concern—the erosion of our families.
In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that “America has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.”
A 2022 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that more than 23 million children live in single-parent homes in America.
To be clear in my career, I worked with many competent single parents.
Yet, I believe for too many years, we have failed to understand the impact on students in our school environments when the parent or family is dysfunctional in providing the support a child needs in school.
That instability makes me wonder how many of our school shooters came from unstable homes? Regrettably, I wonder how many more might come from those stressful settings?
In James H. Cone’s book, The Cross And The Lynching Tree, he quotes Dr. Martin Luther King, and a comment he made after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Dr. King told his wife: “This is what is going to happen to me also. I keep telling you this is such a sick society.”
Dr. King was correct—we are a sick society.
Our mental sickness has left its blood stains on every school shooting that America has endured.
America is overdue to cure our sickness.
This is urgent.
Failing to solve guarantees more school shootings.
Haven’t we had enough?
Written by Bill Pike submitted to the Washington Post on August 28, 2025.
Dismissal of Virginia Tech Football Coach
I have no allegiance to Virginia Tech football. Our oldest daughter is a Hokie. From this connection, I have quietly pulled for the Hokies. In life or death losses, the extreme pain of Hokie friends has eluded me.
Contrary to some Atlantic Coast Conference(ACC) fans I was not opposed to the expansion that brought Virginia Tech into the ACC. Academically and geographically, this invitation made sense to me.
In today’s college athletics, not much makes sense. The transfer portal and Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) have completely changed how conferences and coaches function.
I’ve never met Brent Pry who was relieved of his coaching duties at Virginia Tech on Sunday afternoon. Yet, I have no idea why anyone wants to coach college football.
The internal and external pressure to win is relentless. Getting those wins means a coach puts his life in the hands of young men who are 18-21 years old.
Recruitment of players can be ruthless. Despite a coach putting his heart and soul into signing a player that doesn’t mean the player will be loyal and play all four years for that coach.
Loyalty and patience are dead in college athletics. Money is the sole driver.
With Virginia Tech’s three losses, no one from Tech’s President, the Athletic Director, or alumni were willing to be patient— might Coach Pry turn the season around?
The humiliating loss to ODU on Saturday night in Lane Stadium was too disgraceful. Impatience exploded.
In President Sands announcement to the Hokie Nation, he has essentially given his blessing to a task force that in short order must: “develop a financial, organizational, and leadership plan that will rapidly position the Virginia Tech football program to be competitive with the best in the ACC.”
Too bad the charge for those Virginia Tech leaders can’t be to return common sense to college athletics, with an emphasis on financial saneness, and a realistic strategic plan that molds an athletic department into an equitable portion of the university— not an isolated empire.
Written by Bill Pike submitted to the Roanoke Times on September 17, 2025.
Author’s note: No matter how passionate the writer, submitting letters to the editor of a newspaper is never a guaranteed acceptance. Yet, I think I will continue my writing whine until my last breath.
might be baloney 