Suspended for pointing a breakfast pastry at someone

OK, too late, I'm started. If a parent came to my school saying: "My kid has been scarred by the pop tart gun and now you must pay for therapy and 12 years of private education" that would be FAR FROM THE CRAZIEST THING I HAVE SEEN. Even if the school were to win in court, all our kids are in bigger classrooms because we had to let teachers go so we can afford to pay the lawyer. You people have NO IDEA!

Oh I don't think the teachers or principals are the ones to blame, hands are tied. It falls somewhere between the courts and Board of Education, which is a government issue. I imagine most teachers want to see changes more than many parents.

There's a great book called The Death of Common Sense and it has a chapter or two on the education system and how teachers are totally powerless and it's a big problem. Good read.

I have no doubt this is a school board level decision. The teachers are along for the ride like everyone else.

S.

The biggest problem is that the United States is so sue-happy that school boards all are scared and have passed rediculous zero-tolerance policies that create these sort of obnoxious decisions. Fortunately private schools are (usually) not so crazy. I'm the principal of a parochial K-8 school and have wide lattitude with these things. My public school counterparts are usually not as fortunate. I can give you some pretty bizarre and shocking stories of other cases where the punishment does not even remotely match the crime.

I got STABBED by another kid in a middle school tussle. He was sent home for 5 days. Bananas.

MattLoter wrote: I got STABBED by another kid in a middle school tussle. He was sent home for 5 days. Bananas.

Why did they even send him home? Obviously the worst possible punishment is attending that school.

in grade 9, i got thrown into a garbage can and it knocked out my front tooth. Right before a field trip too which I then couldn't attend. Before the school put out punishment for the dude that knocked my tooth out, they asked me if I thought he should go to the field trip (sugaring off) or not. The guy is looking right at me as they asked. Not wanting to be thrown again into a garbage can the next day, I of course said he should go. So they let him go on the field trip.

Meanwhile, I had 4 hours of root canal work, brutal. The very next day I got detention for having my shirt untucked.

Things were tame in the 90s. Nowadays, I guess it would be a measured response for me to burn the building down.