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.
Er, no, you don't.
This school, and this family, has failed to teach the difference between "I want" and "I need".
That, on the other hand, is quite close to the ways of tyrants and fascists.
That's it, try to extrapolate rules for schoolchildren into something society wide.
That's not blowing things out of proportion or being dramatic or anything like that.
Yes, in classrooms. This is the first I've ever heard of assigned seating during lunch.
If they're doing it at lunch it's obviously because they've had problems in the past.
The rule is idiotic. And I'm not going to buy the notion that, well, they must have had their reasons for it. Tough cases make bad law -- or, in this case, bad school policy.
I am mystified by those who seem willing to defend any rule whatsoever, simply because "its the rule".
If you don't like it homeschool your kid.
Mine go to a private school. Oh, and they can sit where they want during lunch.
Discipline is not something that should be getting taken out of schools.
There is a world of difference between maintaining decorum, and over-regimentation of this sort. The staff could simply discipline the kids who misbehave, and not punish the rest by not allowing them to sit by their friends. Of course, that would require judgment and common sense.
I'm questioning Dad's judgement all over again . . . cocker spaniels are the dumbest dogs on the planet. Whoever gets one for the family deserves all the karmic stupidity coming his way.
My parents raise Boxers.
And you should know, Boxers are frightening at all. Well, that they might lick you to death. :-)
I know. You told me once that you liked Boxers. That is a picture of Django in my backyard. He's quite a character.
Damn right I would. Both the principal and the school board would be hearing from me -- and from other parents as well.
I'm not one of those people who take the position that "my kids are always right". Far from it. But this policy is idiotic, and I would have no problem making my opinion known.
And what do you teach your kids?
To think independently and to stand up for what they think is right.
To always be suspicious of their teachers, and the rules?
YES!
What, you think this country was founded by those who trusted that those in authority were always right?
quietly talk to the teachers and find out their reasons for doing things, and see if there can be compromise.
That's fine, as a first step. Other action would follow, though, if I wasn't satisfied with the response.
I call it the "Nuclear Tounge."
I have had friends who were scared of Django, and it just makes me laugh. Who could be scared of that doofus? He just wants to lick. And lick. And lick. And lick......
Good your kids go to a private school and they can sit where they want.
Since your kids aren't going to a public school mind your own business with respect to how they're run and stick to telling the private school how they should do things.
If they aren't good enough for your kids then they obviously aren't worth your busybody time.
You have as much credibility as someone who homeschools does with respect to telling them how they should run their school. In other words, none.
Maybe the principal can assign them friends to play with, too.
This guy is going to create an out of control teenager.
How does assigned seating during lunch "forward learning"?
Laws and rules are for little people.
Obviously this girl has never been told no in her life.
She is heading for disaster butwhen it happens it will be someone else's fault not hers.
Don't believe it? Ask her father.
He probably will blame President Bush.
Sorry, children are not adults.
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