Posted by
DecoNservAtiVE on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 10:26:15 AM
"NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.
Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.
“It just seems unfair,” Zachary said, pausing as he practiced writing lower-case letters with his mother, who is home-schooling him while the family tries to overturn his punishment."
In a separate incident, a girl was suspended for bringing an uncut cake, and a knife to school.
"House Bill 120, introduced by Rep. Teresa Schooley (D-Newark) comes in the wake of a recent incident where an 11-year old student was suspended for five days and faced expulsion because she brought a knife to school to cut a cake.
The girl’s teacher used the knife to cut the cake, then reported the student for bringing a deadly weapon to school, according to the girl’s parents. No charges were pressed against her, but the Leasure Elementary School student was suspended according to district policy.
The policy classifies any blade longer than three inches as a deadly weapon, regardless of its use, and students caught carrying or concealing one are subject to five days suspension and possible expulsion.
HB 120 would give school boards the ability to modify the terms of expulsion or determine that it is not an appropriate punishment on a case-by-case basis.
“I am in no way making light of the situation of children bringing weapons to school, but I think adults know the difference between a weapon and a knife being used to cut a cake,” Schooley said. “Because the law is so strict and there’s no room for discretion, families are placed in difficult situations where they have to get a lawyer to fight expulsion.”"
Let me just say, THANK YOU REPRESENTATIVE SCHOOLEY! And thank you to the 16 cosponsors(where the hell are the rest of our legislators, I would expect all 41 representatives to be sponsoring this bill unanimously).
This is the problem with a “one size fits all” solution. Kids like young Zachary, so excited about taking a POSITIVE step forward end up violating some policy somewhere. Our children have had their youth stolen from them. When I was a 7 year old boy at least 5 of my cub scout friends did this EXACT same thing everyday. Heck, I wore my baseball spikes to school one day because I was excited to be playing in a game that afternoon.
Today our 6, 7 and 8 year old kids are treated like adults and assumptions of violent intent are made immediately. How, in just 20 years have we allowed the innocence to escape out children? Have we really spiraled this far down? And if we have, shouldn’t we do something to help out children regain that innocence and be allowed to be kids?
I know I'm just an average Joe but can't we do better than this?