Education Law
Cub Scout, 6, Broke Weapons Rule With Camping Tool, School Says
Posted Oct 13, 2009 2:51 PM CST
By Martha Neil
Excited about becoming a Cub Scout, 6-year-old Zachary Christie couldn't wait to use his new camping tool.
But when he brought out the utensil—which can be used as a knife, a fork and a spoon at lunch at Downes Elementary School in the suburbs of Wilmington, Del., officials concluded it violated the weapons ban. Under a zero tolerance policy for such violations in the Christina School District, administrators had no choice but to suspend the boy for 45 days, reports the New York Times.
Zachary feels the penalty is unfair and his mom, Debbie Christie, has started a website in an effort to lobby support for her son to go back to school.
State lawmakers recently weighed in on a similar issue, after a third-grade girl was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake with her to school—as well as a knife to cut it with, the newspaper recounts. While lawmakers clarified that local school boards have the authority to modify such expulsions, they didn't specify that school boards have the same power concerning suspensions, the Times recounts. A legislative amendment is now being discussed.
The president of the Christina district’s school board, George Evans, says the zero-tolerance approach serves an important purpose: “There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife," he tells the newspaper.
However, he predicts that the board may take a more flexible approach with young children like Zachary.
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Comments
AndytheLawyer
Oct 13, 2009 3:26 PM CST
Kid’s mom to school board: “Go spork yourselves!”
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B. McLeod
Oct 13, 2009 3:49 PM CST
What? Did the kid hit his atropine injector with no nerve gas on the perimeter? Then I guess they better also take away all his pencils and pens, any paint brushes that lack thoroughly blunted handles and (God forbid) his protractor and compass set, as well as any rulers or magnifying glasses heavy enough to inflict blunt force trauma. Oh, and of course, they’ll need to put him in restraints. (“Zero thought policy”).
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Anon
Oct 14, 2009 8:30 AM CST
Education has always been full of sick people who get some kind of warped pleasure out of making and enforcing ridiculous, often humiliating, rules.
But lately, the “zero tolerance movement” really does seem to have spun wildly out of control. If it’s not expelling children for bringing camping sporks or birthday cake to school, or sending them home for wearing flower print shirts (on the theory that any sort of design could be a gang symbol), then it’s performing body cavity searches on young girls alleged to possess Advil.
These “educators” should really get their kicks some other way, with consenting adults.
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associate
Oct 14, 2009 8:39 AM CST
Yesterday I read where they nailed an Eagle Scout and Army recruit for having a pocket knife in the survival kit in the trunk of his car.
The inmates are running the asylum. Ah progress.
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Esq.
Oct 14, 2009 9:48 AM CST
I suspect this story would not be so “cute” if it involved a minority kid in an urban school setting.
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Drew
Oct 14, 2009 9:51 AM CST
They should have to say “Zero tolerance, strict liability” policy. After all it’s not just that they don’t tolerate any mistake, it’s also that they create these rules without any attempt to reach the actual feared behavior. As B. McLeod points out, there are many sharp and potentially dangerous items in school. The question should be whether any of them are brought there for the purpose of threatening the safety of someone.
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S.A.Hill
Oct 14, 2009 9:57 AM CST
Quote for the article:
“There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife.”
A pencil, though, would be OK? No? Ban pencils!
I’ve been fighting nonsense zero tolerance school rules when my kids were young. Such rules are a poor substitute for thinking.
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Esq.
Oct 14, 2009 11:42 AM CST
@ #6: So a BB gun is permissible so long as it is not brought to school with the purpose of threatening someone’s safety?
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Justin Dealy
Oct 14, 2009 11:44 AM CST
If this was April I’d swear this was an April fools joke. The incompetence that is running our school systems is pathetic.
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B. McLeod
Oct 16, 2009 12:10 AM CST
Esq., I would venture that when I was this kid’s age, it would have ruffled no feathers anywhere if any of my classmates had brought their “Red Ryder” to “show-and-tell.” I would have to add that any kid then would have known better than to even point it at any other kid.
Obviously, things have changed considerably, particularly the absence of training in children and the utter brainlessness that seems to pervade all our modern society.
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