No Common Sense In The Public School System

No Common Sense In The Public School System: Children suspended for using their finger as a gun and saying pow. One Child suspended for tossing a paper gun made by her Grand father into the trash.   Yes the incidence of violence across America is sad and disturbing. And yes I think something needs to be done to help protect our children in schools across America. But this trend which is growing , that suspending students for normal childhood behavior, is far more disturbing.  There is a toy gun for sale in America at every 99 cent store in America.  I realize that toys should not be brought to school. But suspension?. A wayward 5 year old should miss part of their education, because some over zealous educator thinks they are going to save the world by a ZERO Tolerance policy which ignores normal human behavior in the children they are supposed to be educating. It is wrong, it is backward and it needs to stop. Adults are getting very tired of being told that they are crappy parents by simply allowing their children to grow up normally. Oh by the way-I was a parent. And I was also a victim of backwards thinking and institutional rules which do not take into account "normal human behavior" .  But it is getting worse. Time for the parents of today to band together and speak up loudly!. Paper is not a deadly weapon.  

Kindergartner Suspended Over Bubble Gun Threat

19 Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America #1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume. #2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class. #3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket.  The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong. #4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled. #5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up.  Instead of being sent to see the principal,they were arrested and sent to court. #6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk. #7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school. #8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class. #9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school.  It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples.  So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this?  The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor. #10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender. #11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school. #12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross. #13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture. #14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police.  The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back…. “Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.” #15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor andtasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker. #16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom.  The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637. #17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida. #18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area. #19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.       Pupil Suspended for Drawing Soldier   Six-year-old suspended for making gun gesture.  The child, who attends school in Silver Spring, Maryland, was given a one-day suspension after the incident, which took place a week after the US massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.  Robin Ficker, the boy's lawyer, said that the child was suspended after he made a gun with his hands, pointed it at another student and said "pow". Guns, Guns, Guns.  If people are just grown-up animals, more articulate versions of the creatures who eat each other's young, and sometimes their own young, there is as much use in wondering about the nature of evil as there is in trying to understand why a killer whale kills. [...] But evil just can't be controlled.  Not with the sort of zero tolerance policies that confuse object with subject, which ban pocket knives and finger shootings to prevent real shootings.  That brand of control isn't authority, it's authority in panic mode believing that if it imposes total zero tolerance control then there will be no more school shootings. Gift of toy guns at elementary school upsets parents.  Rutherford County school leaders took steps to tighten loopholes in the district's suspension policy Thursday.  The move came two weeks after a student at Barfield Elementary School handed out several toy guns to his classmates.  The toys were inside some gift bags the fourth grader gave out to celebrate Eid al-Adha, an Islamic holiday. The students had better not bring Tylenol to school, but... Some NYC schools to offer "morning after" pills.  New York City's Department of Education has begun offering "morning after" contraceptive pills to students in a pilot program at 13 of the city's high schools. [...] The birth control will be available to students as young as 14 without parental notification. Should Texas Cops Be Giving Tickets to 6-Year-Olds?  This may sound like a ridiculous question, but according to a report on Yahoo! News, Texas cops are indeed giving tickets to 6-year-olds.  What crimes are being committed in kindergarten? Editor's note: The news item immediately below was sent to me via email on May 10, 2012.  Kimberly Smith's daughter was arrested after apparently being the passive victim of a lunchroom altercation at school.  Her story is worth reading, so click the link and read the details. Children should not be arrested for doing the right thing.  My name is Kimberly Smith, and I am trying to reach out to everyone to share my daughter's story.  My 14-year-old daughter was arrested after reporting an altercation to the school office.  Our daughter has never been in an altercation in her life.  This was the first, after being bullied time and time again for getting good grades, winning freshman princess, and the Thomas E. Steiner award.  She stood up to another girl who threw lettuce and ranch [dressing] all over her. Nebraska school says deaf 3-year-old's sign-language gesture for his own name looks like 'weapons,' must change.  School authorities in Grand Island, Neb., fret that the hand sign used by 3-year-old deaf boy to signify his own name is a violation of district policy on banning anything that may resemble a weapon, the boy's family says.  They want him to change it. The Editor says... I guess that means that if you name your kid Dynamite you have to send him to a private school. Jolly Rancher lands Brazos ISD third-grader in detention for a week.  A third-grader at Brazos Elementary was given a week's detention for possessing a Jolly Rancher.  School officials in Brazos County are defending the seemingly harsh sentence.  The school's principal and superintendent said they were simply complying with a state law that limits junk food in schools. Massachusetts 2nd-Grader Sent Home for Crucifix Drawing.  An 8-year-old boy was sent home from school and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after he was asked to make a Christmas drawing and came up with what appeared to be a stick figure of Jesus on a cross, the child's father said Tuesday [12/15/2009]. Queens girl Alexa Gonzalez hauled out of school in handcuffs after getting caught doodling on desk.  A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense — doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker, the Daily News has learned.  Alexa Gonzalez was scribbling a few words on her desk Monday [2/1/2010] while waiting for her Spanish teacher to pass out homework at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills, she said. Don't blame me, says principal who called for the arrest of Queens girl, 12, for doodling on desk.  Education officials say it was a "mistake," but the principal of a school where a 12-year-old girl was arrested and cuffed for doodling on her desk won't back down, the student's mom said Friday [2/5/2010].  Alexa Gonzalez no longer faces a suspension for scribbling with a lime green marker, but principal Marilyn Grant told her mother, Moraima Camacho, that agency policy dictated that she calls the cops. Man shocked by arrest after daughter draws picture of gun at school.  A Kitchener father is upset that police arrested him at his children's' [sic] school Wednesday [2/22/2012], hauled him down to the station and strip-searched him, all because his four-year-old daughter drew a picture of a gun at school.  "I'm picking up my kids and then, next thing you know, I'm locked up," Jessie Sansone, 26, said Thursday. Gun leading to dad's arrest was a toy.  A plastic toy gun is to blame for the mayhem that saw a man arrested at his daughter's school this week.  It was found in the home of the Kitchener father of four after he was arrested over a drawing his daughter drew at the school on Wednesday.  Jessie Sansone was strip-searched but not charged. ... The school board, police and child welfare officials all say proper procedure was followed in the case. Who's proper procedure? photo by Peter Lee, Record staff.
Canada: Four-year-old Allegedly Sketches Gun; Dad Arrested, Strip-Searched.  On February 22, Jessie Sansone of Kitchener, Ontario, thought he was making a routine stop to pick up his children at the end of a school day.  Instead, he found himself arrested, strip-searched, and thrown in jail.  His wife was also taken into police custody, while his children were spirited away by child welfare agents.  Anyone observing this series of events would think Sansone had committed some horrific crime.  In fact, he had done nothing even remotely illegal.  The entire Sansone family was treated to this raw display of state power because four-year-old Neaveh Sansone had allegedly committed the unforgivable sin of drawing a picture of a gun at school. We need more of this.  School officials in Gastonia, North Carolina, reversed the suspension of Emanyea Lockett, 9, for "sexual harassment" after he called a substitute teacher "cute."  Best of all, school officials effectively fired the moron who suspended him, Principal Jerry Bostic.  Why a man of 44 years experience of working with children would do something so rash is beyond me.  But don't cry for Jerry Bostic.  His pension will be at least 80% of his pay.  Based on an average principal's salary in that area, he should be looking at $6,000 a month. Lawsuit: Student arrested for burping.  A 13-year-old was handcuffed and hauled off to a juvenile detention for burping in class, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed against an Albuquerque public school principal, a teacher and a city police officer. More schools rethinking zero-tolerance discipline stand.  Nearly two decades after a zero-tolerance culture took hold in American schools, a growing number of educators and elected leaders are scaling back discipline policies that led to lengthy suspensions and ousters for such mistakes as carrying toy guns or Advil. More schools ease zero-tolerance policies on drugs.  At least four Hunters Lane High School football players who were suspended last fall for smoking pot before a game will graduate with their class on Saturday.  That makes them the most high-profile beneficiaries of a new Metro Nashville Public Schools effort that takes student discipline for drugs on a case-by-case basis, instead of applying a zero-tolerance policy to all. The Editor says... In other words, zero tolerance policies are to be overlooked if they adversely affect blacks.  (I doubt if these "students" are being shown favoritism just because they play football, although that would be just as bad.)  This means that the discipline standards for black students are lower than the standards for other students. The Bullied Nation.  After the Columbine Massacre, all the conferences on bullying yielded a Zero Tolerance madness that criminalized everything from toy soldiers to plastic knives to playing cops and robbers.  Six-year-old cub scouts have been suspended for bringing camping equipment to school.  Arrests have been made for shooting rubber bands.  Advil and Midol have become controlled substances. ... There will be no conferences held on this type of bullying because it is practiced by the conference attendees, the school bureaucrats and teachers, and the public officials who enable them, against the children placed in their care.  And their only solution to every problem is more of the same. Restoring Integrity at Dansville Schools.  Dansville School administrators needlessly dragged my son's name through the mud, yet takes no responsibility for their own actions and little accountability.  This Blog is an ongoing diary of the issues that face Dansville Public Schools and their administrators that will ultimately result in the district failure if they aren't resolved. Zero Tolerance, Zero Sense.  Two good kids.  Two broken rules.  Two parables of justice, except one offers a bracing lesson in honor and the other just leaves you heartsick at the latest evidence that zero tolerance often makes zero sense. Arvada Police arrest 11-year-old over 'inappropriate' stick figure drawing.  An 11-year-old Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs for drawing stick figures in school, something his therapist told him to do.  His parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. 9-year-old suspended for 'kick me' sign.  It's a sign of the times.  The classic schoolhouse prank of slapping a "kick me" sign on a classmate's back is no joke at one Upper East Side school, where the city's zero-tolerance anti-bullying policy was strictly enforced against a 9-year-old boy. Boy Bagged For Taking Eco-Unfriendly Ziploc to School.  Isabel Theoret was preparing a sandwich for her 6-year-old son's Kindergarten class one day last week, when he screamed out, "No Mommy! Not a Ziploc!"  The child, who lives with his family in the town of Laval in Quebec, explained that his teacher would exclude him from a contest to win a stuffed teddy bear if he brought an environmentally unfriendly plastic baggie to school. Texas school police ticketing students as young as six.  School police officers in Texas are doling out more tickets to children as young as 6, who under past disciplinary practices would have been sent to the principal's office instead, according to a report by a Texas nonprofit. Model Student, Sports Star Suspended for Paring Knife Mix-Up.   On its face, this looks like it's an asinine decision which is probably the product of a culture that makes lawsuits possible in every breath we take.  How else to explain what the school principal has done here?  It's either the school's fear of a lawsuit, or a total lack of common sense among the school's leadership, or there's something we don't know about all this that hasn't shown up in the media reports. Sorry, But We Deserve Our Schools.  Public schools aren't the failures they're castigated for being; they are misunderstood successes.  True, they don't teach very much English, math, or history but that's a secondary job.  Young kids are regularly suspended for drawing pictures of guns, wearing T-shirts with guns on them, possessing empty ammo casings, or anything else suggestive of an armed citizenry.  That's primary, and the public schools are good at it.  The students maybe can't multiply or read, but they all know guns are bad, just as they know how to do sex and sell green theory to their parents.  They are turning out well-trained future voters favoring the current leftish pieties who will obediently support Progressive government and who will not ask too many questions. High school student faces expulsion for unloaded hunting rifle in car.  A 16-year-old high school student in Columbia Falls, Montana faces possible expulsion after accidentally bringing an unloaded hunting rifle to school.  Though the gun did not pose any danger to others at any time, the school's zero-tolerance policy might mean Demarie DeReu will be labeled a domestic terrorist, her college career derailed and record tainted forever. Columbia Falls girl faces expulsion after leaving hunting rifle in trunk.  A 16-year-old Columbia Falls High School student faces expulsion after inadvertently bringing an unloaded hunting rifle to school.     Other web sites dealing with zero tolerance issues: Zero Intelligence:  The implementation of a zero tolerance policy is the equivalent of giving up on common sense, reasonability and intellect.  All infractions are grouped into types with uniform punishments regardless of the individual facts of the incident.  Possession of Advil is treated as if it were equivalent to pushing crack.  An honor student with the wrong type of pencil sharpener is punished the same as a known delinquent with a switchblade would be.  Improper use of an inhaler leads to arrest as assault with a weapon.  It is easy to see why we call these "Zero Intelligence Policies". End Zero Tolerance:  "A comprehensive and up-to-date national resource for those interested in learning more about the negative impact of Zero Tolerance upon students, families and society." Z T Nightmares:  This site publicizes the downside or evils of zero tolerance school discipline policies, and contains dozens of rather alarming anecdotes and numerous additional links. Parents Against Zero Tolerance:  This is a newsgroup on Yahoo, and apparently requires registration. Katy Zero Tolerance.  (Katy is a suburb of Houston.)  This site has lots of information about a recently passed Texas law addressing this issue, and links to other resources for Texas residents fighting the same battle. Jerry Moore's Zero Tolerance News Blog.  Many more anecdotes and lots of useful information about the ZT problem and ways to deal with it. Social Consequences of Zero Tolerance.  Yet another page that describes a number of ZT cases. Parent Advisory Council Team.  This site offers advice about due process and describes ways to effectively deal with injustices at public schools by filing complaints with the right people. The Madness is Spreading.  You might think "Zero Tolerance" is a playground issue — just a way for school administrators to deal with violent kids.  If you did, you would be wrong.  ZT is a mindset of black-and-white rules applied to a gray world. Our Horrible Children  is a freqently updated weblog devoted to tracking the idiocy of the zero tolerance policies prevalent in most public schools today.