Less Zero Tolerance my behind!!!

[Racket_Man]

It seems that the Zero Tolerance policies have been eased at bit esp from the Federal level, BUTit seems that the states and lolcalities have not gotten the message yet.....

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/articl...expel/19671641

OK the first topic of the article I can somewhat get. a 7 year old brings what appears clearly to be a toy gun to school and gets suspended/expelled (a little harsh to be sure)

but the article goes on to list some of the more outrageous things that CHLDREN have been expelled/arrested/suspended for including this one which is a total WTF????

A 12-year-old in Inverness, Fla., was arrested, cuffed and taken to jail for stomping in a puddle to splash his classmates.

and the infamous one:
A 6-year-old in North Carolina was suspended for kissing a girl.

In a different case, 8-year-old David Morales wanted to honor American troops in June, so he wore a camouflage hat that he had decorated with an American flag and small plastic Army figures. His school in Coventry, R.I., banned it, deciding it violated a zero-tolerance policy for weapons because the tiny soldiers held guns. It told the family it would be OK if he replaced the figures with ones that didn't have weapons.

Still, Samuel was not allowed to register for school this fall, and since his parents didn't want to send him to an alternative school for "at-risk" students, he has been homeschooled for the past year.

article for the last one with a picture of the hat
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/17...-holding-guns/

yes the school district objected to little GREEN TOY ARMY MEN!!!!!

and WHAT THE HELL is this "at-risk" school BS concerning an 8 year old with little green army men????? it's not like the kid came to school fully dressed in BDU
s with a bandolier full of genades, a combat knife, camo painted face, and an M-16 strapped to his back and a backpack fullof ammo and smoke bombs.

I think some districts have their heads so far up their asses with this zero tolerance rule BS.

[Andara Bledin]

Zero Tolerance is just an excuse for administrations to turn off their brains instead of doing their jobs.

It's already far too late for this imbecilic and dangerous policy to be stamped out.

^-.-^

[radiocerk]

And I'm pretty sure it's time to look at zero-tolerance policies and see that they don't work. I mean, we've all noticed how well the anti-bullying policies have worked at some schools lately.

[Rageaholic]

Holy shit

•A 12-year-old in Inverness, Fla., was arrested, cuffed and taken to jail for stomping in a puddle to splash his classmates.

Do I even need to describe how effed up this is?

•An eighth-grader in Virginia was suspended for taking a knife from a suicidal friend and putting it in his locker for the day.

Yeah don't even think about trying to intervene. Just let the school handle it! They handle everything else so well!

Did they even take into account that it was the was suicidal friend who had the knife in the first place?

•A 14-year-old in Florida went to jail as an adult for six weeks after being accused of stealing $2 from a classmate.

He should have got school detention or something, but jail? Jesus Christ, it's 2 dollars! TWO DOLLARS! Why get the police involved over two dollars!!!!

I know those are all extreme examples, but it really is out of control. It's like the police jailing someone because he ran a stop sign once. This is an accurate analogy because in two of these stories the police did get involved.

Instead of focusing on such trivial stuff on dishing out harsh punishments, why don't they do something about bullying, depressing, peer preasure, and other REAL problems that negatively affect students. Instead, those problems get ignored because Jimmy was late for class or Tommy brought a toy gun to school. Kids are still assholes to one another, and students are even more negatively affected over super strict rules.

[Andara Bledin]

Here's another one to get the blood boiling.

Vice Principal has 13 year old student strip searched for contraband over-the-counter ibuprofin.

^-.-^

[Sage Blackthorn]

Tyranny in any form should never be tolerated by a people who consider themselves free.

[MadMike]

Zero Tolerance is just an excuse for administrations to turn off their brains instead of doing their jobs.

I've always said it should be called what it is -- Zero Intelligence. They don't want to have to think, so they institute these idiotic policies so they don't have to. After all, it's so much easier to suspend both people who were in a fight, instead of try to figure out pesky details such as, did the one person jump the other person completely unprovoked? Was the other person defending himself or did he antagonize the other person?

In the real world, even killing another person isn't black and white. There are certain cases where it's perfectly legal to do so, such as self-defense.

As far as the kid in the original post who is now being home-schooled, that may be the best thing for him. We seem to have too many idiots these days trying to "educate" our kids.

[Rageaholic]

Here's another one to get the blood boiling.

Vice Principal has 13 year old student strip searched for contraband over-the-counter ibuprofin.

^-.-^

Reminds me of that thong search several years ago. 4th admendment rights aside, isn't that.. ugh... I don't know...

SEXUAL ABUSE

Sickos.

[KitterCat]

What’s even more f’d up in the 13 year old strip search is the fact that the courts gave qualified immunity to the people who striped her saying that “clearly established law did not show that the search violated the Fourth Amendment”. So yah so long as you suspect a kid of having “drugs” on their person and document it a teacher can have a kid striped.

Not only do you have to wonder that school administrators are smoking you have to wonder what some judges are taking as well.

[McDreidel09]

Here's another one to get the blood boiling.

Vice Principal has 13 year old student strip searched for contraband over-the-counter ibuprofin.

^-.-^

I remember having to smuggle in ibuprofin in high school. I put mine in a clean and empty lip stuff container in my purse. It was seriously the dumbest thing ever. You could even get in trouble for having freaking MIDOL on your person.

[blas87]

Uh no. It cannot be ok to strip search a young kid just because in your own mind and *authorita* beyond a shadow of a doubt that kid has contraband on him and her!

[Andara Bledin]

You could even get in trouble for having freaking MIDOL on your person.

Welcome to the world of Zero Tolerance, where even a prescribed inhaler can be kept in a locked cabinet and only accessed by visiting the school nurse and hoping she's in her office.

I'm just waiting for the first kid to suffer some egregious harm from this policy and sickened that it's going to have to come to that before these ZT zealots can be forced to pull their heads from their asses.

^-.-^

[MadMike]

What’s even more f’d up in the 13 year old strip search is the fact that the courts gave qualified immunity to the people who striped her saying that “clearly established law did not show that the search violated the Fourth Amendment”. So yah so long as you suspect a kid of having “drugs” on their person and document it a teacher can have a kid striped.

So if you're a teacher and want to grope some little kid, all you have to do is "suspect" that there are drugs. Just wow.

If that happened to me when I was a kid, I'd scream "pedophile" loud enough for everyone to hear.

[McDreidel09]

Welcome to the world of Zero Tolerance, where even a prescribed inhaler can be kept in a locked cabinet and only accessed by visiting the school nurse and hoping she's in her office.

I'm just waiting for the first kid to suffer some egregious harm from this policy and sickened that it's going to have to come to that before these ZT zealots can be forced to pull their heads from their asses.

^-.-^

Oh tell me about it! We only had two nurses for the entire school district, so there were days where the nurses weren't even there at all! Of course, the nurses couldn't work separately (district decision). I remember one time, I had to excuse myself from class because I felt so much pain and people were telling me that my face was extremely pale. I went to the Health Center only to find the lights off and the door locked.

[Plaidman]

Wow. For all my hatred of middle/high school years, they were at least you know, smart about medication. People were allowed asprin. People were allowed inhalers. People were allowed perscribed medicine. (There was a girl that helped robbed someone, and ended up getting shot in the face and lost her eyesight that had high dosaged pain killers).

I guess I got to give them credit for that area. Bastards.