Posted on 12/30/2004 12:26:26 PM PST by TFFKAMM
Kelli Ilyankoff, who loves school, did not make it to class Thursday.
Trinity South Elementary School principal Charles Braden suspended the 10-year-old for one day for "terroristic threats" after seeing a sketch she drew after finishing a math test Tuesday.
A female classmate, Kelli's friend, had passed her a piece of paper with a sketch depicting a gravestone with a third child's name on it. Kelli, in turn, sketched another tombstone with her friend's name, along with "1993-2004 – nobody cares about you."
The two then began to giggle, attracting the attention of a student teacher who confiscated the note, tore it up and threw it in a wastebasket, according to Kelli.
"We were just kidding around, playing," she said.
The student teacher told another teacher about the sketch, which was then reassembled and delivered to Braden.
Kelli spent Wednesday in Braden's office before his decision to suspend her.
"I can understand, if she is drawing a picture of someone bleeding and wrote, 'This is you. This is what I'm going to do to you,'" said Tami Ilyankoff, Kelli's mother. "But this is ridiculous."
Her daughter is a model student, she said. She gets good grades, plays softball, studies flute and has never been in trouble at school before.
Meanwhile, for Halloween this year, the school decorated the hallways with tombstones adorned with teachers' names, Tami Ilyankoff said, finding it odd that the decorations were encouraged, yet her daughter was suspended.
Braden would not comment.
"I'm not allowed to discuss anything of a confidential student matter," he said.
Trinity Superintendent John Springston would not specifically comment about Kelli's suspension.
"If we think something is a threat of any nature, we have to take it seriously," he said.
Last year, he said, a student drew a picture of a bloody knife with another student's name on it, and that student received a similar punishment. The mother of the student whose name appeared on the knife was irate, demanding that the child be prosecuted.
"To this parent, we're too severe. Too that parent, we weren't severe enough," Springston said, illustrating the quandary school administrators face when making decisions about student discipline. "That's what we have to deal with and we have to make a decision."
The district's policy defines a "terroristic threat" as "a threat to commit violence communicated with the intent to terrorize another."
If an administrator has reason to believe such a threat occurred, the student is immediately suspended, and the superintendent is informed. That student could be reported to police, and the superintendent can recommend to the school board that the student be expelled.
Ah yes, schools and their "zero intelligence policies."
}:-)4
On the other hand, if she had drawn a picture of two men kissing, she'd have been given a tolerance parade.
How does a model student picture a classmate DEAD and buried?
Head sticking out of a pile of dirt with x's for eyes?
As you say, it's mean and nasty, picking on another little girl like that. But it's not terrorism. Discipline is called for, but let's give it the right name. This is bullying. Little boy bullies go around hitting each other. Little girl bullies undermine each other and try to make their enemies unpopular.
When I was a kid I preferred being bullied by boys. At least they were straightforward about it and you could hit them back.
LOL!
I want a tolerance parade too!
The one being really nasty was the friend. Her friend sent the original picture with another kid's name on the tombstone. The girl then drew another tombstone, put her friends name on it, and passed it back.
If there was a threat (give me a break - there wasn't, but for the sake of discussion...) IF there was a threat, it was made by the suspended girl's friend. The girl who got suspended might have even been diffusing a threat against a third party.
You're right. I didn't catch that.
In prep school, we had a kid who had a voodoo doll of our biology teacher. The teacher thought it was pretty funny. And... the kid got all A's.
It's not bullying in the true sense of the word. It's evil thoughts that make no sense at all.
you didn't happen to go to school in new jersey did you?
cause your dreams almost came true...
t
I shudder to think of how they'd react if they caught a couple of kids playing "hangman".
Like, someone's head? That's a terroristic name.
Remember signing high school yearbooks? You would draw a target on that obligatory aerial view of the school on the first page and graffito it something like "Drop H-Bomb Here". Today, I suppose your next stop would not be graduation, but federal prison.
Public schools are becoming a microcosm of what the NEA would like our society to become.
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