While they are arresting seven-year-olds in New York, South Carolina schools are expelling a six-year-old girl for bringing her brother’s toy gun into school. We have been discussing the steady stream of absurd actions taken by school officials under “zero tolerance” policies. For a prior column, click here. This is yet another example. This little girl picked up her brother’s toy gun. Rather than call the parents into the school and reprimand the girl, these school officials chose to expel her from Alice Drive Elementary in Sumter, South Carolina. It is bizarre that Principal Sheree T. Boozer (right) could not simply see a child’s mistake for what it is.
Yet, officials insist “Sumter School District takes any potential threat very seriously.” That’s funny because if they wanted to be taken seriously, they would not be expelling six-year-old with toy guns. Instead, they look like tyrannical clowns.
Naomi McKinney grabbed her brother’s toy gun without telling her parents for show-and-tell. Her father was told by the principal that his daughter had shown up with “a gun” at school and would be expelled. When he got there, she pulled out a clear plastic gun.
The family has appealed in vain and has been told that Naomi cannot be in the car when they pick up their other children because she is presumably a danger to the other children.
She has now been out of school for a month and placed on “Administrative Homebased Services” where she is supposed to “receive services through the homebased (sic) teacher.”
She is not alone in being expelled for a toy gun.
As an attorney and an educator, I am furious to read such accounts. It makes a mockery out the school system and shows a virtually moronic enforcement of these policies. What these educators are doing is avoiding any requirement of personal judgment or thought. These abuses continue because principals and school officials face no discipline for abusing a child in this way. They teach the students a dangerous form of authoritarian learning with the imposition of senseless and arbitrary rules.
Source: WLTX
Follow these tips and the next time you are out buying a dog toy, you will be able
to safely pick a toy that is suitable for your dog.
Toys offer dogs a way to stay active and entertained.
I don’t want to turn this article into a cat porn story so I will spare you the details.
It holds untold powers with component towards treasures as well as at the same time the
escape below reluctance towards selection vault remote island what makes extra
model wheel bring of the top pc games of 2009. “According to the map, Mag, we need to go up Circuit Avenue to find the Camp. Originally the area was larger but in 1955 the northern half was named Viking.
As Naomi’s father I would like to say that the teachers and pricipal were in support of my daughter. The policy was the problem, they were just C.Y.O.A. on how to handel it and all went to bat for her. But “if you let one slide you have to let them all slide” sooooooo I shed a little light on how the policy needs to be re examined, and it worked things will change and instead of “one size fits all” it’ll be case by case- Intent, use, and history will decide the out-come in the future in our district. Thankyou for your support and yes I accept some of the blame….. you cant watch them all the time
Hank Mckinney
great idea for schools, not so much for the capitol
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/01/27/2428082/armed-mans-intrusion-unnerves.html
Is Sumter, SC, inside of Fort Sumter? Did they mean Some Tier when the spulled it? Maybe all the kids there should skip the notion of Charter schools and be home schooled. If all the kids were home schooled then teacher and principal would not have a job. Also the kids would not grow up to be dumb or dumber than teacher and principal. None dare call a principal a pal. Its a matter of principle.
Do we hold Romney, former Governor, against the state of Massachusetts?
Do we hold Senator Warren against the same state?
So why say Lindsey Graham is proof that South Carolinians are bla bla.
Divide and conquer. United we win. Even if we have some that need 24/7 guidance in life.
Well said Jonathon.
Oh so this is the way society treats 6 yo kids now if they pick up the wrong toy.
This is an innocent little 6 yo with a plastic toy and the treatment dished out to her is outrageous. Any normal person would have simply taken the toy from the chld and advised that those toys are not permitted at school. Then the parents should be quietly advised of the situation and the toy returned to them. Instead we have this nonsense and it is nothing short of emotional and mental CHILD ABUSE by the teachers and administrators involved. Just another example of how “common sense” is not common at all.
The code of conduct for the school district reads in part:
“Code of Conduct
The district’s code of conduct and discipline is established to achieve and maintain order in the schools. In administrative rule JICDA-R, the board and the administration offer a list of offenses along with the required or recommended dispositions for the information of students, parents/legal guardians and school personnel.
Disciplinary actions will include appropriate hearings and review. The removal of a student from the learning environment will occur only for just cause and in accordance with due process of law. The administration will consider extenuating circumstances when taking disciplinary action.”
It would be interesting to know what proper processes were adopted in this very minor case to exclude this poor innocent child from school, a child who would have never understood the implications of bringing a toy gun to school which, to her, was nothing more than another play thing.
I wonder, if the 6 yo child was from a ” minority group”, whether the same hideous and excessively harsh and unjust treatment would have been dished out by those in charge of this circus. I suspect the treatment by those involved in that event might have been very, very different.
It would be nice if some generous lawyer could now take up the case for the parents and make the lives of those involved an absolute misery as various civil law suits are filed against those persons that administered this dreadful treatment to an innocent child.
Thank heavens for professional teachers like this lot. Without them showing us the way we would all be so totally lost.
I am sure she and her counterparts sleep much better at night knowing that they have saved their school from immeasurable future harm from this innocent 6 yo girl with her brother’s toy in her school bag for a day.