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Zero tolerance, zero brains
A 6 year old takes a cub scout camping tool to school and suspended because it includes a knife. Note also the third grader who was expelled after she brought a birthday cake and a knife to cut it (the teacher thoughtfully used it to cut the cake before reporting her to the principal).
UPDATE: I know an attorney here, a good friend, who had a mother come in and tell a tale of woe. Seems her kid had been fencing a stolen pistol at school. A potential buyer asked if it worked, and he showed it did by touching off a round in the air. On the school property. He got suspended or expelled, and the mother wanted to sue the school. On a theory, I guess, that is it utterly unreasonable to discipline a thief selling stolen guns, and shooting them, on school property.
The attorney yelled, get the hell out of my office! It's people like you and your little monster who make life hard for me and mine!
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Once again, it holds true: zero tolerance = zero basic common sense.
We pay well-educated administrators to make judgements. Make them. Don't hide behind idiotic "zero tolerance" policies. It doesn't take a genious to see this is not a weapon.
Good God; why are school administrators so often such morons?
To answer your question, GMC70, they do this because you, collectively as parents, have trained them to by suing when the administrator used to make judgement calls in the past.
I agree that this is stupid, but can the school be successfully sued for large sums of money when they do this?
No.
My own solution to this will be to not let any future children of mine set foot in a government run school, ever.
"you, collectively as parents, have trained them to by suing when the administrator used to make judgement calls in the past."
Because collectively as parents, we (in the last 30 years) have without judgment or sense or reason, automatically taken the side of our children, and where we should have been asking the child why he or she did that, we've directed our anger at the school administrators and demand that they "stop picking on my kid". Then, as you say, the worst of us have taken that demand to a lawyer who is only too happy to ask for money on our behalf.
Have any of you spent time around or in a college-level "School of Education" that teaches those who become public school administrators?
If you had, you wouldn't be wondering why there are so many zero-tolerance policies that take zero-thinking to implement in public schools.
Can we sue the dopes pulling this crap and using the "I was just following orders (the rules)" defense?
My wife was "counseled" about bringing a plastic cake knife into her school, where she was a student teacher. Since she wasn't an employee all they could do was send her home.