Boy's camping utensil = weapon
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| Mon, 10-12-2009 - 12:25pm |
I think this school really went over the top on this one... "School officials concluded he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary faces 45 days in the district's reform school." Say WHAT??!!! Good grief!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/12/MNM21A4B2T.DTL
"Boy's camping utensil violates 'zero tolerance'
Ian Urbina, New York Times
Monday, October 12, 2009
(10-12) 04:00 PDT Newark, Del. -- Zachary Christie, 6, was so excited about joining the Cub Scouts that he brought a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school to use at lunch.
School officials concluded he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary faces 45 days in the district's reform school.
Spurred in part by the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, many school districts around the country adopted zero-tolerance policies on possession of weapons on school grounds. More recently, there has been growing debate over whether the policies have gone too far.
But, based on the code of conduct for the Christina School District, where Zachary is a first-grader, school officials had no choice. They had to suspend him because, "regardless of possessor's intent," knives are banned.
Critics contend that zero-tolerance policies like those in the district have led to sharp increases in suspensions and expulsions, often putting children on the streets or in other places where their behavior only worsens, and that the policies undermine the use of common sense by school officials in handling minor infractions.
For Delaware, Zachary's case is especially frustrating because last year state lawmakers tried to make disciplinary rules more flexible by giving local boards authority to, "on a case-by-case basis, modify the terms of the expulsion."
The law was introduced after a third-grade girl was expelled for a year because her grandmother sent a birthday cake to school, and a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal - but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake.
Education experts say that zero-tolerance policies initially allowed authorities more leeway in punishing students, but were applied in a discriminatory fashion. Many studies indicate that African-Americans were several times more likely to be suspended or expelled than other students for the same offenses.
Other school districts are also trying to address problems they say have stemmed in part from overly strict zero-tolerance policies.
In Baltimore, around 10,000 students, roughly 12 percent of enrollment, were suspended during the 2006-07 school year, mostly for disruption and insubordination, according to a report by the Open Society Institute-Baltimore. School officials there are re-writing the disciplinary code, to route students to counseling rather than suspension.
In Milwaukee, where school officials reported that 40 percent of ninth-graders had been suspended in the 2006-07 school year, the superintendent has encouraged teachers not to overreact to student misconduct."
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I think if Zachary were my child, I'd find a way to home school, due to lack of common sense on the school systems part. Then they wouldn't be getting any Federal ADA money for my kid to go to "reform" school or any
I'm wondering if this was a "Swiss Army Knife"! If it was than I kinda agree with the school. Since I'm an oldster on here, I can remember when we were not allowed to bring them to school. Period. But I can also remember guys driving their pick-up trucks to school with a shot gun in the back window. The punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime. For such a young child. It wasn't that long ago that kids were being suspended for drawing a gun or making a gun with their fingers. Which I thought was crazy for suspending them.
Delaware 1st-grader has 45-day suspension lifted
"If she gets a new thermos, she wants to show it to the world."
This was all this little guy wanted to do was show-off his special eating utensil.
Suspended Boy Back in School
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/education/15discipline.html?_r=1&hpw
Zachary Christie, 6, wants to make one thing clear: he was not at Disneyland last week.
On his first day back at school in Newark, Del., after he was suspended and ordered to the district’s alternative school for troubled youth for taking to school a camping utensil that included a small foldout knife, Zachary said his fellow first graders kept asking him how he had spent his days away.
“I kept telling them that I was at home doing my work,” he said.
School officials had initially ruled that the camping utensil was a weapon, and that under their zero-tolerance policy they were required to suspend him and send him to the alternative school for 45 days. They reversed the punishment Tuesday night and revised the discipline code.
Zachary arrived at school on Wednesday morning with a smile from ear to ear, his mother said. He slalomed his way through the satellite trucks and reporters gathered out front, and sat with his classmates in a circle on the carpet in his class.
Joined by his teacher and his mother, Zachary soon stood to tell his classmates that they should be sure to ask their parents before bringing anything new to class.
“I told them that I think they should follow the rules,” he said, adding that in his case he had not realized he was breaking a rule.
By noon, Zachary’s excitement about being back at school had worn off, and his mother, Debbie Christie, took him home after lunch. “I just didn’t feel like I was fitting in,” Zachary said.
Ms. Christie said that when she arrived at the school, several parents thanked her for standing up to school officials and forcing them to make needed changes to the code of conduct.
***Zachary Christie, 6, wants to make one thing clear: he was not at Disneyland last week. ****
It's funny they mentioned this. I was working in dds kindy classroom. Another aid was asking the kids what they did over the weekened. After one child said he went to Disneyland, the entire rest of the group claimed they had gone to Disneyland over the weekend. We live an 8 to 10 hour drive from Disneyland, so it was highly doubtful that 18 kids, from one class,
Hellooo Christina School District!
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