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School idiocy--student finds pellet gun, turns it in, is expelled
Here's the story. A middle school student finds a pellet gun in a restroom, turns it in to a teacher, and is expelled for possessing it since he had to possess it in order to take it to the teacher.
hat tip to Dan Gifford.
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Zero tolerance is the perfect policy for school administrators with zero brains. It removes from them the burden of having to actually think.
By similar dogma(I can't call it 'thinking'), it's not uncommon to see girls expelled for giving Midol to other girls because of 'zero tolerance' drug policies.
Home schooling is on the rise for a reason.
Some crackerjack attorney (hint, hint) needs to take a school district that has such zero tolerance laws, file an FOI request and get all the cases, then see what percentage of them are actually for students bringing (actual) weapons onto campus. If a significant number of these cases are as discribed above, I think a fair case of deprivation of Constitutional right (State right, it doesn't exist in the Federal Constitution I don't believe) to education is directly caused by the laws.
Seems to me that said laws could be chucked out on this basis alone.
Now, some school districts handle these expellees by sending teachers to their homes, but here in OR, that costs a minimum of $25,000 per student per year, so there is an excessive price levied on the population for this "protection".
To quote the school board's own statement, "purposeful possession of weapons is a serious offense and deserves careful consideration by the administration and the school board." The problem seems that they gave the matter absolutely no consideration, careful or otherwise. He touched a gun, therefore he must be expelled; next case. If I were raising children to be mindless automatons, those are certainly the people I'd want teaching them. No recognition of circumstances, intent, or outcomes, just blind adherence to rules. If they've got more than a single brain cell between the entire board, it seeems to be terribly wasted.