For all of you who support the school in this matter
I strongly disagree with you.
The only thing you people are missing are the guard
towers.
FREEDOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!
Posted on 05/20/2004 10:50:06 AM PDT by Puppage
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. -- Twelve-year-old Gianna LoPresti wants to sit with her friends in the cafeteria. But she may need a permission slip -- from a judge, that is.
At Galloway Township Middle School, students must sit in the seats they're assigned to during lunch hour. The girl, a seventh-grader, has been cited three times for violating the policy.
Now, her father is suing the school, saying the rule violates First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
"These are kids," said Giovanni LoPresti, 40. "It's not a prison."
School officials say the restrictions are aimed at keeping order in a lunchroom buzzing with 260 seventh- and eighth graders.
The dispute began two weeks ago when the girl returned home from school and told her father she'd been given detention.
"I thought she'd done something drastic," said her father. "I said `You had to have done something.' She said she sat with her friends and socialized at lunch."
The girl was found sitting in a seat she had not been assigned to and was given three detentions -- one for each week she had done it. Lunchtime detention consists of eating lunch in a classroom, under a teacher's supervision, away from the cafeteria.
LoPresti says the restriction is unfair because it assumes all students are potential troublemakers.
The girl, who has been punished previously for talking in class and once throwing a calculator onto a desk, is no troublemaker, according to her father.
On Monday, he filed suit in Superior Court seeking an injunction barring the school district from enforcing the policy.
School officials say the seating restriction has been in place for years and that parents are advised of it through student handbooks sent home at the start of the school year.
"The students are allowed to move around the cafeteria," said Schools Superintendent Doug Groff. "All they have to do is ask permission from teachers or the principal. It's not that they're restricted. It's just decorum."
Typically, the cafeteria has up to 260 students in it during lunch periods, he said.
"Normally, parents understand that we need some rules in schools. They expect that and they have an expectation. If you let kids wander wherever they wanted, the parents would say 'What kind of school are you running? You let the kids run wherever they want,"' Groff said.
Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's New Jersey chapter, would not comment on the legal merits of the girl's case.
She said free speech has restrictions as to time, manner and place, but that enforcing assigned seating in a school cafeteria was unusual.
"It sounds like an excessive restriction. I'm not aware of other schools with 260 kids who have resorted to this. This sounds overreaching to me," she said.
Typically, school principals -- not school boards -- make such policies for their buildings, according to Michael Yaple, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.
"Our sense is that it's not uncommon to have assigned tables or rules saying students can't roam about the cafeteria. The courts have typically given wide latitude to school administrators to maintain order and discipline," Yaple said.
Frank Askin, director of the Constitutional Law Clinic at Rutgers University's Newark campus, questioned whether LoPresti has a legitimate First Amendment claim.
"I certainly wouldn't want to take his case," said Askin.
In fact, no one has. LoPresti is acting as his own attorney.
Though she hasn't served the lunchtime detentions yet, his daughter said it's wrong for the school to tell her where to sit.
"I think the school thinks the students are going to cause trouble at lunch. It's wrong to punish the kids who do nothing. We need to talk to our friends during lunch," Gianna LoPresti said.
The problem is that there ARE no responsible adults in charge.
Between teachers' unions, Zero-Tolerance, and ivory-tower curricula bureaucrats, they make damn sure no one can ever be held responsible for anything.
Except maybe the parents, and sometimes the kids.
Kids - disrespect wrongful authority!
Suppose my Kosher child is assigned to sit next to students who bring bologna sandwiches from home every day. Would you find that acceptable or should my child be entitled to some sort of religious accomodation? What about a child with allergies?
I just have difficulty whenever government, or a governmental agent, exercises power in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Accepting such behavior demonstrates a willingness to submit to authority without question which is unacceptable to anyone who cherishes their liberty.
The rule of a Prinicpal in a school, or of a Teacher in a classroom -- or even of the Lunchroom monitor -- may well seem to or be in all reality capricious and arbitrary yet still proper to so be, in the respect for the authority they must legitimately at times wield -- to establish that "awesomeness" of authority.
Yet even then it is full subject to bounds of sanity and human decency. And foolish caprices bring on disrespect for the authority -- all of nature and man himself appreciate and honor rationally used authority and disdain capriciousness.
Yet to be capricious while with no other harm to morality, decency and not pushing over the bounds of all sanity -- that is authority's due.
Well ya gotta teach those kids that Pesky Constitution isn't going to get in the way of Communist rule !
Loose lips sink ships.
Something Democrats know alot about !
Younger children require the protection and guidance of parents - older children(teens) have to learn to become adults by taking their own steps.
Of one thing I am certain - few models for responsible adult behavior are to be found in public schools, or anywhere else that modern, 'progressive' government has seized control.
If the young don't defeat home-grown socialism, I don't know who might.
I finally get to disagree with you. You can't assume that these kids are getting an afternoon recess. At the school my kids attend, they get one 15 minute recess per day (only one grade has it after lunch, the class recesses are all staggered because the playground is too small for more than a couple of classes at a time). Recess is 15 minutes and lunch is 20 minutes. For the rest of the day, the kids must be quiet, stand in line, sit in their seats, do their work.
There is so little time to let off steam or be self directed, that I wonder if they are creating behavior problems for themselves.
As for this kid, I would have told her to serve out her punishment, show me that she can behave properly for several weeks, and only then would I approach the Principal about the rule.
Home schooling sounds better and better.
I think there should be many more choices --- vouchers might be a very good answer --- I'd just as soon have my kids go to a school that was only about learning and skip all the social events --- lunch could be for eating but wouldn't need to be about popularity. Here the kids often get together and leave the campus with their groups and that's quite dangerous. You even see kids rearrange their class schedule so they can have lunch together ---- it seems they don't remember what school is really for.
I have a feeling this isn't what is behind the father's lawsuit. It's probably more like "suppose his daughter is assigned to sit next to a nerd or an uncool student". Likely religion or race have nothing to do with it --- she's at school to be cool and wants to hang with the cool kids. Likely the school has had problems with the lunch hour and kids forgetting completely what school is supposed to be about.
I think the ones who agree with this "assigned seating" policy have already been sucked into the sheeople side of the lunchroom. Assigned seating my a$$! Never heard of such nonsense.
Baaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!
For all of you who support the school in this matter
I strongly disagree with you.
The only thing you people are missing are the guard
towers.
FREEDOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!
Do the teachers have assigned seating for lunch as well, or are they allowed to freely associate with whomever they want? One of the arguments against home schooling is that the kids miss the opportunities to develop social skills. Forced association is worse in my mind than no association. How much confidence and comfort will the children have in their lunch neighbors that they will open up and enjoy the experience? How much of their total lunch period are they subjected to the forced association? If assigned seating is okay for lunches, what about on a school bus? I could make a better argument for assigned seating on a school bus for safety reasons than the needless oppression at lunch.
I get the feeling that the faculty at this school has assigned seating for faculty convenience. They do not care if they alienate the students. And alienated students are not the most receptive to classroom instruction. To the faculty the kids are just an inconvenience they have to put up with while they pass the time necessary to earn their salaries.
I don't know --- but in many workplaces, you go to lunch or break according to a schedule --- not just because you need to socialize with your friends. Actually I think there should be more choice --- but rather than the father promoting the idea that social time is the only important thing about school, it might be better if more parents believed schools are for education and learning. Here in the high schools, most of the kids take off in cars at lunch time and it's a problem.
>>I finally get to disagree with you<<
Were you looking to?? LOL!
>>You can't assume that these kids are getting an afternoon recess. At the school my kids attend, they get one 15 minute recess per day (only one grade has it after lunch, the class recesses are all staggered because the playground is too small for more than a couple of classes at a time). Recess is 15 minutes and lunch is 20 minutes. For the rest of the day, the kids must be quiet, stand in line, sit in their seats, do their work<<
I stand corrected. If there is no where else for these kids to socialize, there should not be assigned seats. Yet, we are in agreement on how the child and parent should have handled it. So there ;-).
Are you aware that novice drviers in many states have different restrictions than non-novice drivers?
Same principle.
The similarity between rules for children in a lunchroom and laws for adults?
There is none.
The father needs to get a life. Sure hope when we move we won't have LoPresti for a neighbor. What a creep.
I mean no personal offense with this answer to your feelings about rules:
1. Homosexuals dont see the point either about natural laws pertaining to holy matrimoney
2. Abortionists dont see the point about their murderous practices
3. The 9th circuit does not see the point in keeping "under God" out of our nations pledge
4. Illegals dont see the point of immigration laws
I can go on, but my POINT is, that rules are implemented for reasons. Children need and should have rules, following them whether they "agree" or not. I APPLAUD this school for treating children for what they are: CHILDREN WHO HAVE YET TO UNDERSTAND THE "POINT" OF OBEYING RULES.
Liar! She's obviously a stone cold criminal!
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