Zero Tolerance (more of the same old crap)

[Alan B]

May 13, 2002


Zero tolerance takes toll on pupils
By Valerie Richardson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


CENTENNIAL, Colo. — When Nepata Godec received a call from Dry Creek Elementary School last month telling her that her son and his friends were being sent home from school, she prepared herself for the worst.

"I thought somebody was in the hospital or something," said Mrs. Godec.
But she was even more shocked when she discovered the real reason. It turned out 10-year-old Aaron Godec and six other fourth-grade boys were being suspended for the rest of the day for pointing their fingers like guns during a game of army-and-aliens on the playground.
"So I thought, 'Yes? Then what? Did somebody fall or poke somebody in the eye?'" she said. "But that was it, and we needed to come to school to pick up our son. I couldn't believe it."
That wasn't all. As the stunned parents later discovered, the principal, Darci Mickle, also quizzed the boys on whether their families owned guns.
For 10-year-old Connor Andrew, whose father formerly worked as a licensed hunting guide, the question placed him in an impossible position. He had been warned not to discuss his father's firearms in front of other children lest they become curious and ask to see them.
Torn between obeying his parents and obeying the principal, he chose his parents. "I asked Connor about it, and he started to cry, and he told me he lied to Mrs. Mickle and answered 'no,'" said his father, Charles Andrew.
"He was afraid he would get in more trouble, and that [the family] would get in trouble," Mr. Andrew said.
Because Dry Creek is located about 20 miles from Columbine High School in the south Denver suburbs, it would be easy to dismiss what happened March 25 as an isolated incident, an extreme but understandable reaction from a community with reason to be paranoid. Easy, but wrong, because Colorado isn't alone.
That day, the Dry Creek seven joined a growing fraternity of students across the nation who have learned the hard way about "zero tolerance." A popular stance for schools grappling with the specter of school shootings, drugs and alcohol abuse, the strict no-second-chances policy has resulted in maximum punishment, including detention, suspension, expulsion and even arrest, for what was once viewed as normal horseplay.
School officials defend zero tolerance as an unfortunate but necessary reaction to increased demands for school safety. The decade-old policy generally goes hand in hand with anti-bullying programs that have become widespread across the country since the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine, which left 15 persons dead.


http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020513-9519286.htm


Why didn't they ask the boys for their papers too.

I really like this part

But the district is standing behind the principal. "The district must know whether a student has the means to carry out a threat of violence to help us determine the level of the threat of violence against other students or staff,"

and this

Mr. Head backed the district on that decision, saying that society has a legitimate interest in knowing where the guns are. "I know that doctors are doing it, and increasingly parents are doing it — asking if there are guns stored in the home before letting their child play at someone's house,"

oh please yes lets register them.. then knowing where they are will make everyone safe ... yea right.

[Apple a Day]

"For teachers or principals to ask such questions, however, amounts to invading a family's privacy by targeting its most vulnerable members, say critics. "Clearly that's outrageous," Mr. Kopel said.
"That's like asking what political party your parents belong to, or how they voted, or whether they've ever had an abortion," he said. "It's none of the schools' business how parents exercise their constitutional rights. The first thing I'd say is, that's extremely bad judgment. The second thing is, that principal should be fired."

That about covers it. The idiot principal should be fired. I wonder if Mr. Head's first name is Richard.

[KSFreeman]

Government skuls do not care about the kids. The kids are only bargaining chips to control the parents.

[Bog]

I was so relieved recently to find out that it's legal to educate your own kids from home.

Damned if I'm sending any progeny I might have to those places!