Posted on 05/20/2004 9:08:28 AM PDT by jtminton
FORT WORTH - A wooden baseball bat, no longer than 8 inches and visible through a car window, spurred Diamond Hill-Jarvis High School officials to call sophomore Cory Henson out of class Monday in order to search his vehicle.
Under the Fort Worth school district's zero-tolerance policy, Henson was immediately suspended, pending a conference with administrators today. Officials will decide whether the bat is considered a weapon that would merit punishment, including placement in an alternative school or expulsion for up to a year.
"First I was stunned," said Cory's mother, Sheila Henson. "I thought, I'll go up there and investigate this a little further."
Henson said it was "humiliating" for her son to be pulled out of class and have his car searched while other students peered out of the classroom windows.
District policy calls for immediate suspension of a student if a prohibited or hazardous item is found in the student's vehicle.
Henson describes the bat no bigger than the souvenir bats available at professional baseball games. The piece found in Cory's car broke off a trophy, he said. He does not know how it ended up car but said someone was probably playing with it and left it in the back seat.
Henson said her son never gets in trouble. The 16-year-old plays junior varsity baseball at the school. Because of his suspension, he was not able to attend the end-of-the-year sports banquet this week.
"Why did it have to go to that level?" she asked.
What's more confounding to Henson is that it was the small bat, and not the full-sized aluminum bat that was in the trunk with other baseball equipment, that was confiscated as a weapon.
Sgt. Daniel Garcia of the Fort Worth Police Department School Initiative Unit said he was not aware of the full-sized bat in the car. If the student plays baseball at the school, then common sense would prevail in the situation, he said.
"The [smaller] bat could be constituted as an illegal club," because it was in the driver's access area and had a hole in the center of it, Garcia said.
Police did not file any criminal charges and any handling of the situation is solely at the district level now, Garcia said.
Ignacio Torres, the school's assistant principal, said that because the bat is considered a weapon, he referred the situation to the district office.
The Texas Education Code, adopted in 1995, calls for the expulsion of a student from school for using, exhibiting or possessing a weapon.
LoEster Posey, Fort Worth schools director of student affairs, said that if the item is considered a prohibited item, such as a pocketknife, pepper spray or firecrackers, the student will usually be given only a warning after the object is found.
But if it is considered an illegal item by penal code standards, the student will be immediately suspended pending a conference among the student, parents, a school official and hearing officer.
Posey said this year there have been 27 conferences at the district level as a result of confiscated weapons. Of those, two students were allowed back in school after situations involving clubs that did not fall under penal code standard.
"Parents do have an appeals process, and they usually use it," Posey said.
In an attempt to curb school violence after a rash of school shootings in the late 1990s, many states adopted zero-tolerance policies regarding weapons at school.
In 2002, a student at L.D. Bell High School in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district was suspended from school after officials found a bread knife in the back of his pickup, which was parked on school grounds.
The nonserrated 10-inch knife apparently fell out of one of the boxes the teen-ager and his father had delivered to Goodwill the day before.
The student, Taylor Hess, was expelled after a meeting where school officials told him that his action posed a threat to other students. Hess' one-year expulsion was later reduced to five days after he and his parents appealed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cynthia L. Garza, (817) 390-7675 cgarza@star-telegram.com
Because American society has gone completely insane, that's why.
I think rules like this are in place so people do not have to actually think. Another factor in the death of common sense.
ping
When I went to middle school-junior high all of the boys wore pocket knives on our belts. My uncle gave me mine. some of us had swiss army knives. Never a problem. Hell, i even used to bring a spear gun to school and put it in my locker. I would go spear fishing after school with my friends. The teachers even used to look at it. My science teacher even went spear fishing with us once. He caught a sea snake and put it in the science room aquarium. wow, alot different now.
My kid drove to school for a week with a hunting bow in the trunk and some target arrows. We put them in there on a Friday to drop off at a friends and forgot all about it until the next weekend.
Now that the bow is gone, it will probably be the Tylenol in his travelers first aid kit that will end up getting him in trouble at school.
Good thing he didn't have a real size baseball bat. Imagine that, a kid who plays baseball with a baseball bat. What is wrong with kids these days...
At this school, are students allowed to carry sharpened pencils?
A couple of months ago I told the boys in my Webelos den (10 year-old cub scouts) to bring a tennis racquet the next week so they could earn their Tennis award. They informed me that they couldn't do that because they are not allowed to have a tennis racquet at school because it is a "Weapon" And that if they took a tennis racquet to school to bring to scouts after school they would be suspended for violating the "weapons ban."
hmmmm........yes. Get rid of the miniature bats and THAT'LL stop the shootings. Yup yup yup.
The only hope we have is for the students who have to endure such things will grow up and become congressmen and senetors who will NIX the NEA.
Thats the irony of the whole story, he did have a full sized bat in the trunk.
One word comes to mind: Lawsuit!
In Texas no less! Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Are people really this stupid? Give me five minutes in the principals office and I'll have the cops in there under the same guises!
What's more confounding to Henson is that it was the small bat, and not the full-sized aluminum bat that was in the trunk with other baseball equipment, that was confiscated as a weapon.
He did!
Total insanity. I'll bet that every car in the lot had a tire iron of some sort, far more dangerous as weapons. We must arrest the entire school population including teachers, administration and staff. They must have all been planning something very brutal to carry so many weapons.
These same administrators are the ones creating a crisis in school funding because they are lining their pockets with school funds. Superintendents are making several hundred thousand a year in places, and begging for tax increases that will go into their own paychecks while they showcase crumbling schools for the press.
The next time anyone who walks into another "weapons free zone"/"God free zone" to kill and maim our restrained children with nearly no immediate risk to the perps/jihadies, we'll all be proud of these stupid commendants.
Our children are being taught that there are free lunches and to fear powerful leaders, trinkets, soveneirs, and possessing any means of self-porotection.
We've seen "guilt by accusation" become institutionalized in government schools across our Constitutional Republic.
Taught and ruled by fools.
Sgt. Daniel Garcia of the Fort Worth Police Department School Initiative Unit said he was not aware of the full-sized bat in the car. If the student plays baseball at the school, then common sense would prevail in the situation, he said.
"The [smaller] bat could be constituted as an illegal club," because it was in the driver's access area and had a hole in the center of it, Garcia said.
Common sense...., Hmmmm..... Ya think!
"The [smaller] brain [in the heads of the administrators] could be constituted as [insufficient] mental processing capability,"
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