Posted on 05/06/2005 10:15:07 AM PDT by Responsibility1st
COLUMBUS, Ga. -- A high school student was suspended for 10 days for refusing to end a mobile phone call with his mother, a soldier serving in Iraq, school officials said. The 10-day suspension was issued because Kevin Francois was "defiant and disorderly" and was imposed in lieu of an arrest, Spencer High School assistant principal Alfred Parham said. The confrontation Wednesday began after the 17-year-old junior got a call at lunchtime from his mother, Sgt. 1st Class Monique Bates, who left in January for a one-year tour with the 203rd Forward Support Battalion. Mobile phones are allowed on campus but may not be used during school hours. When a teacher told him to hang up, he refused. He said he told the teacher, "This is my mom in Iraq. I'm not about to hang up on my mom." Parham said the teen's suspension was based on his reaction to the teacher's request. He said the teen used profanity when taken to the office. "Kevin got defiant and disorderly," Parham said. "When a kid becomes out of control like that they can either be arrested or suspended for 10 days. Now being that his mother is in Iraq, we're not trying to cause her any undue hardship; he was suspended for 10 days."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
As a matter of fact at times it is ok to break the rules. Do you just sit at a trafic lite when you sat there for ten minutes and you know it't broke? If your kid has a bad accident at home and has a life threatening injury do you obey the speedlimit on the way to hospital? Would you be afraid to defend your self or family with a handgun because your city goverment has outlawed them? You see, it is okay to break the rules at times.
If there is one thing I have learned in the Army: "It is far easier to beg forgivness than to get permission."
***
True...but this isn't the army. :)
Yeah sought out someone and asked and by then the call would be over. Sheesh my kid BETTER take the call.
"said Alfred Parham, assistant principal at Spencer. 'They're not supposed to use them for conversating back and forth...'"
Oh, I see! His offense was that he was conversating! That explains it! Perfectly reasonable!
The appropriate action would have been to take a large can of RAID to the "assistant principal."
Dreck.
sitetest
Excellent Response. EXCELLENT.
Fatnotlazy's scenario:
Phone vibrates discretely, kid looks and see that it is from Iraq.
Kid, desperately looks for School Cafeteria monitor to ask permission to answer phone... phone continues to vibrate.
Kid finds monitor... who is talking to another monitor. Kid tries to interupt monitors conversation and is ignored. Phone stops vibrating as call times out.
Phone starts to vibrate again as Mom tries again to contact her son. Kid finally gets the attention of one of the monitors... who then says "It's against the rules... I have to get the OK from the principal." Phone continues to vibrate as the monitor heads to the teacher's lunch room.
Phone stops vibrating.
Monitor finds principal is talking on the phone to another irate parent whose kid has been suspended for drawing a picture of his soldier father in Iraq because the picture included the tank his father drives and the tank has (gasp) a gun on it! The monitor sits down to wait.
Phone starts vibrating again.
The monitor waits. The principal hangs up. Monitor explains situation to principal. Principal picks up the phone to call legal counsel at administration to check if it would be OK to let the kid answer the phone. Legal counsel is at lunch discussing the latest lawsuit from an irate parent whose kid was suspended for using his asthma inhaler without permission.
Phone stops vibrating and Mom has to give up the phone in Iraq to the next soldier waiting in line to use it. Mom leaves the communications tent dejected and dispirited. Kid leaves the principal's office dejected and dispirited... but not suspended, feeling warm and secure knowing he followed the idiotic rules that kept him from talking with his MOTHER!
I don't know how you devined that. Even if true, what does that have to do with this particular incident?
Correction, the teacher had no common sense not the "education system."
Yeah sought out someone and asked and by then the call would be over. Sheesh my kid BETTER take the call.
***
Evidently, there was a teacher present...should not have taken that long to ask permission.
And something else -- I went through a period during my high school years when I had to leave early once a week. My parents spoke with the principal and arranged that I could do so. Now, I can't tell whether this particular young man has someone acting as his guardian or not while his mother is serving in Iraq, but it might have been a good idea for that person to have made some special arrangement with the school so that whenever the young man's mother called, he could take the call.
The Peter Principle at work.
My children are raised to have common sense. It would appear that some teachers don't have any. Respect for authority yes. Absolute respect for anyone in authority? Hell NO!!! There are too many in positions of authority who have no business being where they are. If I wanted a child who thought this way I would have a robot. I have children. And children smart enough to know BS when they see it.
A teacher who saw him outside the cafeteria and demanded he hang up. At which point he explained to said teacher he was talking to his mother in IRAQ... at which point said teacher grabbed the phone and DISCONNECTED the call.
The teacher was following the zero tolerance rule.
If the school rules stated that going to the toilet was prohibited during school hours and you were suddenly hit with a severe case of diarrhea, that you should obey the school rules merely because the time of your attack was during school hours?
No, it's the stupid, beaureaucratic, unthinking world of Public Screwl.
...makes the Army look truly enlightened when it comes to training and discipline.
Principal Rutledge:
orutledge@mcsdga.net
Assistant Principal Parham:
aparham@mcsdga.net
Assistant Principal Wendell Turner:
wturner@mcsdga.net
Phone: 706-685-7652
Fax: 706-685-7708
You like corporal punishment huh?
Perhaps, and as soon as the kid told the teacher that he was talking to his mother in Iraq, the teacher should have exercised some discretion and given the kid some space. But that's what happens when you load the public school system with leftests who hate everything and everyone associated with the military.
In that situation - no make that if the police had their guns drawn with an injunction from the Supreme Court and every other petty beauracrat in existence trying to wrestle my child - he or she better answer because it is the RIGHT thing and her PARENT trumps all these morons. You don't get that do you.
I won't let my child grow up like you.
again Baah Baaaah BAA
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