6-year old Zachary Christie has been expelled from a Delaware school because in his excitement of joining the Cub Scouts and his discovery of the classic utensil that can be either a fork, a knife or a spoon, he took it to school to try out. His school, Christina School District, has a zero tolerance policy for “weapons” and Zachary was bounced from school and faces 45-days in the school district’s “reform school”.

Of course there is outrage from those who think innocent Zachary is being punished unjustly and then there are those who offer little sympathy, citing reasons of unfairness should they make exceptions based on each case.

Some are calling for new rules to give the school more flexibility in order to try to determine the intent of a student bringing a “weapon” to school. I say stick with the zero tolerance policy but in order to show the school and the parents the insanity of such ridiculous rules, I want the schools to completely enforce a zero tolerance policy on weapons or potential weapons.

Students are not allowed to bring anything to school that can be used as a weapon. Fine, then the schools must get rid of everything within the school buildings and on the grounds that could be used as a weapon. Zero tolerance policy!

If the children eat their lunches in the cafeteria, there will be no eating utensils. Make the cooks prepare the meals with their hands and the kids and teachers can eat with their fingers. There should be no pens or pencils; no scissors to be used for anything; no shoe laces will be tolerated in footwear or any part of the clothing of students, teachers and administration; no neckties or belts; no rulers or measuring devices; there can be no thumb tacks, paper clips or rubber sticky stuff used to hang stuff on the walls or bulletin boards; all chairs and desks will be permanently fastened to the concrete floor; any equipment used in gym classes will be only “nurf” or soft foam rubber meeting an industry standard that can prove no harm can be done on any student or teacher; no hard cover books, including those in the library; no calculators or laptop computers; no jewelry; no rubber bands, hair clips, etc.; no liquid containers, i.e. cans, bottles; etc., etc.

Most schools have no means of checking kids as the enter the school for weapons, so what good is the policy? If there is that much fear over school safety, then students should be checked before being allowed on the grounds. Read what one educator said about school safety.

“There are still serious threats every day in schools,” Dr. Ewing said, adding that giving school officials discretion holds the potential for discrimination and requires the kind of threat assessments that only law enforcement is equipped to make.

Obviously Dr. Ewing hasn’t the ability to use his own discretion to make judgments not based in discrimination and therefore projects his own shortcomings onto those in positions of authority to make judgment calls. How has our legal system survived all these years? The other question that should be asked is if your children are going to any school where the threat levels are so high that only trained and “equipped” law enforcement can make judgment calls, then what kind of school is it?

Is this the kind of school Zachary goes to? My wife teaches in an inner city school and I can tell you there needs to be law officials on hand constantly to assess disciplinary problems. Unfortunately there are not and teachers are not given the resources or the discretion to dole out discipline nor is it or would it be backed by the administration, much for the same reasons as Dr. Ewing explains.

Is our legal and justice system so black and white that there is never a chance for the presentation of extenuating circumstances or in this case a student and/or the parents to present their case? I’m assuming the Christina School District is a public school system paid for with taxpayer dollars. It is a complete outrage, if not unconstitutional, that a school board is given that kind of dictatorial powers over any human being and cannot carry out the justices granted to us through our Constitution to allow justice to be served. We does this country have courts and a legal system if we are to allow those in positions of authority be lawmaker, judge and jury?

This entire incident is a travesty of justice whether Zachary had bad intentions with his camping knife or not. This is not justice. How do we teach our children about the greatest, albeit not perfect, justice system in the world, if we cannot execute what we have? Is this no longer our intention? Is this not even taught in our schools any longer?

God, it is no wonder our kids are growing up believing they have a right to dictate to others around them how they will live, what they shall eat and drink, etc., etc.

Yes, our education system is in need of a major overhaul!

Tom Remington

Related Posts