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School OKs deaf child’s name sign

August 30, 2012 by

After banning a preschooler from signing his name – they think it looks like a gun – Grand Island, Nebraska school officials have relented. Three-year-old Hunter Spanjer wil be allowed to use his name sign. (There’s a video at the link of the boy making the sign. It doesn’t look like anything in particular to me.)

The boy’s family registered his sign with S.E.E. which stands for Signing Exact English. He uses crossed-fingers to show it is uniquely his own. When Hunter’s parents were told the sign violates the district’s weapons policy, they threatened to bring in lawyers from the National Association of the Deaf.

I wonder if Grand Island objects to Hunter’s name in spoken English. After all, what do hunters use?

Filed Under: Children, Disability, Education, Safety, Violence, Zero Tolerance Tagged With: , , ,

Vee must haff your peppers

May 24, 2012 by

Via Instapundit, we have a chronicle of the absurd: a student is denied access to a prescription inhaler during an asthma attack because his parents didn’t sign a form.

School leaders called Sue Rudi when her son started having trouble breathing. She rushed to the office and was taken back to the nurse’s office by school administrators and they discovered the teen on the floor.

“As soon as we opened up the door, we saw my son collapsing against the wall on the floor of the nurse’s office while she was standing in the window of the locked door looking down at my son, who was in full-blown asthma attack,” Rudi said.

Michael Rudi said when he started to pass out from his attack, the nurse locked the door.

The Blogfather quips, “I’m beginning to think that sending your kids to public schools is starting to look like parental malpractice.”

Apparently no one even bothered to call 911.

Filed Under: Culture, Education, Health, Zero Tolerance Tagged With: , ,

Schools vs. free (rude) speech

May 7, 2012 by

What Right Do Schools Have to Discipline Students for What They Say Off Campus? No right at all, argues civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer  in The Atlantic.

Griffith Middle School in Indiana aims to transform “learners today” into “leaders tomorrow.” Leaders of which country, I wonder, after reading the Griffith Middle School Handbook. North Korea? The U.S. Constitution appears to have no standing in Griffith.

Students can be suspended or expelled for “innuendos.”  The ban on profanity, pornography or obscenity includes  ”other inappropriate materials” and “using or writing derogatory written materials.”  This is “breathtakingly vague,” Kaminer writes. Griffith students may be expelled for “disrespect” toward staff or other students or for “disruptive behavior,” including “arguing.”

Idiotic rules like this are bound to be enforced idiotically, but the consequences for students are not amusing. Griffith Middle School is now being sued in federal court for expelling three 8th grade girls for engaging in a girlish exchange on Facebook that included jokes about classmates they’d like to kill. Their conversation, which lasted less than two hours, was conducted after school, on their own time and on their own computers.

The girls used “LOL” (laugh out loud), smiley faces and all caps to indicate sarcasm, writes Kaminer. They were joking. One of the allegedly threatened students said he didn’t feel threatened and knew the girls were joking. But someone’s mother complained. The girls were expelled for the rest of the school year for bullying, intimidation and harassment.

The students have a very strong First Amendment case — if the First Amendment retains any relevance in public schools. There’s no question that those of us not in actual or virtual custody of school authorities have the right to make jokes about killing each other. Student rights, however, are increasingly limited; anxiety about social media and hysteria about bullying or drug use have only been exacerbated by the post 9/11 authoritarianism that permeates our culture and our courts.

Has the campaign to end bullying — and the fear of school violence — gone too far?

A six-year-old boy in Colorado was suspended for sexual harassment for saying, “I’m sexy and I know it” to a girl standing next to him in the lunch line. The song is featured in a commercial for M&Ms.

Filed Under: Bullying, Free Speech, Violence, Zero Tolerance Tagged With: , , , , ,

California rethinks ‘zero tolerance’

April 17, 2012 by

California lawmakers are rethinking “zero-tolerance” discipline laws that require schools to suspend or expel students caught selling drugs, brandishing a knife, possessing a firearm or explosive or sexually assaulting someone, reports the Oakland Tribune.

In the 2009-10 school year, 7 percent of K-12 students, 13 percent of those with disabilities and 18 percent of black students were suspended for at least one day in California schools, according to UCLA’s Civil Rights Project.

Assemblymember V. Manuel Perez, D-Coachella, has introduced a bill to end automatic suspension, except for firearm and explosives possession. In addition, principals would not be required to report illegal activities to law enforcement authorities.

. . .  it would require a governing board’s decision to expel a student to be based not only on the act itself, but on the grounds that “other means of correction are not feasible or have repeatedly failed to bring about proper conduct.”

Another bill would remove “defiance” as grounds for out-of-school suspension, but would let schools impose in-school suspension. “Willful defiance” leads to 40 percent of school suspensions, reports AP.

School suspensions were once reserved for serious offenses including fighting and bringing weapons or drugs on campus. But these days they’re just as likely for talking back to a teacher, cursing, walking into class late or even student eye rolling.

More than 40 percent of suspensions in California are for “willful defiance,” or any behavior that disrupts class, and critics say it’s a catchall that needs to be eliminated because it’s overused for trivial offenses, disproportionately used against black and Latino boys and alienates the students who need most to stay in school.

“It’s so broad it’s not useful,” said Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president and chief executive of the nonprofit South Los Angeles Community Coalition. “You can’t quite define what it means, what it doesn’t mean.”

 I’ve never been a fan of zero tolerance and in-school suspension seems like a smart idea, but doesn’t this seem like a rather wide pendulum swing? It’s going to be difficult for a school board to expel a student for sexual assault or brandishing a knife.

Filed Under: Education, Zero Tolerance Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Library sends cop to get overdue books from 5-year-old

January 5, 2012 by

The public library in Charlton, Massachusetts doesn’t fool around. When a five-year-old girl and her mother forgot to return two books, the library called the police.

Shannon Benoit reads a book to daughter Hailey.

Shannon Benoit reads a book to daughter Hailey.

Police Sgt. Dan Dowd stopped by the home of Shannon Benoit to tell her she had two books several months overdue. Hailey burst into tears, afraid she’d be arrested.

The books were found and returned. The mom says she never received an overdue notice.

Though failure to return library books is a misdemeanor in Massachusetts, Charlton police didn’t want to get involved, said Dowd.  “But the library contacted us, and the chief delegated, and apparently I was one of the low men on the totem pole.”

It’s nice to know there’s so little crime in Charlton.

That should scare Haley away from the library, writes Betsy.

Filed Under: Zero Tolerance Tagged With: ,

Schools are rethinking zero tolerance

June 3, 2011 by

More schools are rethinking zero tolerance policies, reports the Washington Post.

In Delaware, for example, zero-tolerance cases were a repeated issue in the Christina School District, where a 6-year-old with a camping utensil that included a knife was suspended in 2009. Discipline procedures were revamped last year, giving administrators the discretion to consider a student’s intent and grade, as well as the risk of harm. Out-of-school suspensions in the state’s largest school system fell by one-third in a year.

Researchers have found no evidence that zero-tolerance policies keep schools safer, according to a 2008 article in the American Psychological Association journal.

Discretion! What a radical idea! Maybe that 12-year girl with a couple of Advil isn’t a drug dealer in the making.

As Instapundit puts it: About freaking time.

Filed Under: Zero Tolerance Tagged With: , , ,

School makes decision in discipline case

May 15, 2011 by

The thing that’s newsworthy is that there’s actual decision-making going on, and not just the enforcement of some inflexible policy.  I consider this a good thing:

On Saturday, however, the headmaster, Beth A. Smith, announced a shift in policy. Now, she said, the school would decide whether suspended students could go to the prom on a case-by-case basis.

It’s a private school, not a public school, so we shouldn’t get our hopes up that zero tolerance will be ending any time soon. Nevertheless: this is a win.

Now if we can only get them to start making decisions about whether to suspend someone for hanging an invitation to a dance… there was a time when detention would have been considered overkill for such temerity.

(Of course, we all know that decisions mean lawsuits. Fun times.)

Filed Under: Culture, Zero Tolerance

Suspended for chivalry

March 5, 2011 by

An “A” student at a Virginia middle school received a one-day suspension  for opening an exterior door for a woman whose hands were full. The school recently installed a $10,800 security system.

All of the schools’ doors are locked during the day. Visitors must ring a buzzer and look into a camera before office personnel can let them in.

According to an e-mail sent to the Tidewater News, the student knew the visitor.

You can’t be too careful, writes Radley Balko on Hit & Run. “Your average middle school, high school, or college can expect to see an on-campus shooting about once every 12,000 years.”

Filed Under: Zero Tolerance Tagged With: , , ,

School lets student carry Sikh dagger

February 4, 2011 by

A Detroit-area school district will let Sikh students carry a small dagger with a dulled point. The kirpan represents a Sikh’s commitment to fight evil. Males are expected to carry it at all times.  In California schools, Sikh students usually carry a cardboard kirpan. I’m surprised that wasn’t the solution in Michigan.

A 14-year-old Virginia boy who spitballed classmates at lunch was suspended for the rest of the year and faces three misdemeanor assault charges. He used a plastic tube and pellets, which the school considers a projectile weapon.

Filed Under: Culture, Education, Zero Tolerance Tagged With: , , , ,

The wrong lunchbox

December 29, 2010 by

A North Carolina girl who accidentally took her father’s lunchbox to school has been suspended for the rest of her senior year: Dad had packed a small paring knife to eat an apple.

Ashley Smithwick, 17, of Sanford, a top student and soccer star, hadn’t been in trouble before. She now faces misdemeanor charges for bringing a weapon on campus. That could end her hopes for a soccer scholarship. “When you have a criminal record no school’s going to look at you,” she said. Smithwick  is taking online courses through Central Carolina Community College to earn her diploma.

Lee County Superintendent Jeff Moss told the Sanford Herald that it’s up to the principal to determine a student’s “true intent.”

“Bottom line is we want to ensure every child feels safe on our campus.”

A commenter writes:

“Let’s have the students feel safe. How about letting them feel like their entire lives and livelihood aren’t at risk at your institution from an honest mistake. You are ruining this child’s life and future because some bonehead can’t recognize an honest mistake.”

Close the school, writes Instapundit.  Children aren’t safe from stupid school officials.

Update:  The superintendent says a three-inch knife was found in Smithwick’s purse.  On PJ Media, Bryan Preston has a photo of the “purse,” which is a BYO brand lunch tote.  The school also says Smithwick is enrolled at the school. But she’s banned from campus. 

Filed Under: Zero Tolerance Tagged With: , , ,
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