I have zero tolerance for zero tolerance.
School administration has become the last refuge of despots.
(I'm a retired teacher)
From what I saw, zero tolerance happened because many administrators and teachers had zero common sense about enforcing rules. So many could not resist the "behavior modification" thing of holding infringements over kids' heads for future blackmail. So many were Little Caesars who just liked being to decree stuff. And so often, they were lap-dogs for the powerful, to gain favor.
Where I was teaching, the final straw was when a drug dealer was allowed back in school because the Judge said he would have to go to jail if he wasn't in school!
I have some stories on Schools w/"zero tolerance". Zero Tolerance is for the defenseless but doesn't apply to the bullies and violent kids, because they can cause trouble for you.
You hammer on the kids that draw pictures of a gun or has some nail clippers in his pocket but the playground bully that has a choke-hold on a girl you give a second, third or however many chances are necessary for him to "like you" and DON'T TELL ANYONE.
Taken from real examples.
Most members of the school board seem to recognize to some extent that these are special circumstances without realizing fully their complexity. Phones are available to soldiers on a very limited basis. If this mom's call came through in the middle of the day in Georgia, it was the middle of the night her time and she had probably waited hours after a long day's work on the chance that a phone would become available. Contrary to the the well-intentioned ideas of some board members, a call from Iraq comes when it comes. It's not something you plan, schedule or predict. It may well come in the middle of class, in which case the schools would be well advised to make special arrangements for such. This young man has been been traumatized enough in life; he does not need the school adding to it.
BTW, anybody check out the Spencer High School website's message from the principal? Full of mispelled and inappropriately used words and comma splices...
LOL.