6 year old violates zero tolerance policy

[msmith198025]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?_r=1&no_interstitial


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.

[HD MM]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?_r=1&no_interstitial

I heard of this story this morning. The kid seems like a good kid and probably didn't intend on any harm. In a perfect world, this kid should be given an exception.

Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world any more and there are cases of kids bringing weapons into schools with harmful intentions in mind. It's understandable how schools today have a zero tolerance rule.

Either way, it's sad we had to come to this in the first place.

[msmith198025]

True, an argument could me made either way here.

I think, after the fact, that it should be obvious there was no threat here. In the situation as it happened, I might have made the same call.

[vurbano]

He and his idiot parents should be punished. They let him take a knife to school. What part of that is hard to understand?

[HD MM]

He and his idiot parents should be punished. They let him take a knife to school. What part of that is hard to understand?

Does this look like a kid intending harm? And besides, it was one of those little multi-use tools that he got in Cub-Scouts. A No.2 pencil is probably sharper and more of a danger than this.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/10/12/us/discipline600.jpg