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.
I am against the lawsuit and believe it should be thrown out. Schools should be able to do what they need in order to establish discipline and keep children under control.
My comments were in regard to a policy which teaches children nothing about discipline, and allows lunchroom supervisors to become vegetables for the period. Children need to be given responsibility, including the responsibility of making choices and maintaining acceptable behavior. Assigning them a seat in the lunchroom is punishment for all.
Just for the sake of telling a story...
We had an incident when I was in high school. Some kids were damaging or stealing silverware from the cafeteria. The school decided to take the silverware away from everyone and replace it with very cheap plasticware. A few in the school organized a lunch strike, and less than twenty students ate a school lunch the day of the organized strike.
It didn't take long for the silverware to come back.
That arguement won't fly - several states use the EXACT same assumption in their game & fish regulations and enforcement. Such laws in that case have been upheld...
Furthermore - even though I don't agree with the rule (unless there is far more to this story - and an ongoing discipline problem that we have not heard about), the rule sounds pretty simple to follow. I wonder if she made an effort to request a change in seats. Also - is there any possibility she was one who caused trouble and resulted in the seating arrangement?
She also violated the policy not once, but three times.
If this lawsuit goes anywhere - it's a travesty of justice.
"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.
You need to shut up and learn you little witch. School is for learning not whatever you want it to be.
We all had assigned seating when I was this kid's age (granted that was over forty years ago). No big deal. It's called order and discipline and respect. This Dad sounds like a whiny "Me Me Me" kind of twerp.
And kids need to follow the rules. That's the way the world works.
sheesh, no wonder the kid's a brat.
29. Why?
The way this should have been handled by the father would be to tell the daughter that she broke the rule and therefore must pay the consequences. However, also explain to her that she went about trying to change this rule in the incorrect fashion and offer to try to talk to the school administration about getting her seating arrangement and/or the rule changed.
Are all rules by definition "good" rules?
Frankly, this policy is idiotic. And if one of my kids were in this school, I'd be raising hell to get it changed.
Assigned seating has been around forever. If they're doing it at lunch it's obviously because they've had problems in the past.
If you don't like it homeschool your kid. Discipline is not something that should be getting taken out of schools.
Lunch wa sthe only time that we didn't have assigned seating. It was nice to actually be able to sit with your frineds.
"She had an assigned seat, like everyone else. Everyone else seems to have followed the rule, she didn't. She was punished. And now, her whiney father is bent on teaching his little precious some seriously bad life lessons."
Rosa Parks had an assigned seat too. No one complained about the seating policy on Montgomery busses until one brave soul refused to accept an unreasonable policy. I think the young girl should be commended for her independent thinking rather than chastised for being treated in a manner befitting inmates in a prison.
I think he is teaching her valuable lessons for citizens supposedly at liberty to freely associate with whomever they desire.
Oh goody. Just lie down and let them roll over you. Hey, when are the brown shirts coming out?
And kids need to follow the rules. That's the way the world works.
You need to start carrying your papers, citizen! The rules are you will produce them whenever you are asked! And what is this about not wanting to get your new chip implanted? You know the rules! You will do as we say.
"Hey, when are the brown shirts coming out?"
Home games.
While in school, also during the middle of the 70's for elementary school, we had to sit with our class. The teacher sat at the head of the table. We could sit with anone we wanted too, as long as it was at our assigned tables. The only time we had assigned seats was if we were bad during class time and the teacher would give us the dreaded boy girl boy girl asssigned seats. (In kindergarten this was horrible).
Even in the 7th grade, we still had to sit with our class. I believe just one of the many problems with public school is the presence of real discipline. In every day life, I am sure everyone of us has a rule, or group of rules that really sucks. We have to follow them anyway, or suffer the consequences. This man, should quite honestly, use this instance to teach his daughter there are going to be many rules she is not going to like that are going to require her to follow them any way. No one gets to pick and choose which rules we will follow, and which ones we won't follow.
I would be very interested in seeing how this turns out.
Having the kids sit in preassinged seats at lunch is a long way from a Nazi putsch taking over the USA.
It's a very minor thing, and quite reasonable.
>>Frankly, this policy is idiotic. And if one of my kids were in this school, I'd be raising hell to get it changed.<
Have you worked a school lunch lately?
If assigning seats is such a problem, it makes me wonder what would be ok?
It's not like these kids can't see their friends on the playground afterward. Does this child also have a problem with her assigned seat in the classroom? Would her father also complain about that? (Sorry, I did assigned seats in the lunchroom as a kid, I have no deep seated psych problems).
I have been in a lunchroom of 200 kids. I never want to go there again.
Darling little girls like this are used to getting their way. Daddy is just feeding into it. My six year old had a classroom full of these dumplings who had the world rise and set on their little butts. Remind them of a rule and they will smile as they do what they want. The parents back them because, "Little Suzy is just not that way."
Thank you God and all the FReepers who helped me convince Dad to let me homeschool.
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