Family members provided an image as an example of the sketch drawn by the boy. PROVIDEDPosted on 08/22/2007 5:17:53 AM PDT by radar101
Family members provided an image as an example of the sketch drawn by the boy. PROVIDED
An East Valley eighth-grader was suspended this week after he turned in homework with a sketch that school officials said resembled a gun and posed a threat to his classmates.
But parents of the 13-year-old, who attends Payne Junior High School in the Chandler Unified School District, said the drawing was a harmless doodle of a fake laser, and school officials overreacted.
“I just can’t believe that there wasn’t another way to resolve this,” said Paula Mosteller, the boy’s mother. “He’s so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good.”
Payne Junior High officials did not allow the Tribune to view the drawing. The Mostellers said the drawing did not depict blood, injuries, bullets or any human targets. They said it was just a drawing that resembled a gun.
But Payne Junior High administrators determined that was enough to constitute a gun threat and gave the boy a five-day suspension that was later reduced to three days.
The Tribune isn’t publishing the boy’s first name at the request of his parents.
The suspension follows an unrelated incident earlier this month in which Gilbert police were called to Payne Junior High School to investigate a rumor of a girl bringing a gun on campus. No gun was found and a letter was sent home to parents.
In the letter, school officials told parents about the incident and indicated there would be a zero-tolerance policy toward gun threats.
Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the school is not allowed to discuss students’ discipline records. However, he said the sketch was “absolutely considered a threat,” and threatening words or pictures are punished.
The school did not contact police about the threat and did not provide counseling or an evaluation to the boy to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat.
The Mostellers said their son has no discipline record at the school because they just moved from Colorado this year.
The sketch was one of several drawings scratched in the margins of a science assignment that was turned in on Friday. The boy said he never meant for the picture to be seen as a threat. He said he was just drawing because he finished an assignment early.
School officials issued the suspension on Monday afternoon and notified the student’s father, Ben. He met with school officials and persuaded them to shorten the suspension from five days to three.
A second student was also suspended Monday for a sketch on his homework. However, that student and his parents could not be reached for comment about the nature of that drawing.
Ben Mosteller was allowed to see his son’s drawing at the school but was not permitted to make a copy to bring home to his wife.
Paula Mosteller said she has been unable to reach the school’s principal, Karen Martin, or the vice principal, Dave Constance, since Monday to talk about the suspension. Martin and Constance did not return several phone calls to the school for comment.
When Ben Mosteller came to the school to discuss his son’s punishment, he said school officials mentioned the seriousness of the issue and talked about the massacre at Columbine High School — the site where two teenagers shot and killed 12 students and injured 24 others in 1999 at Littleton, Colo.
The Mostellers said the Columbine reference was extreme and offensive. They have contacted the district’s governing board about the incident.
“We understand that there was zero tolerance and the sketch could look like a gun, but the way this was handled was so horribly wrong,” Paula Mosteller said. “Hopefully, when my son goes back to school on Friday this will all be behind him. But a school accusing a child like this can have a huge effect on a child for the rest of his life.”
Since you lump all public schools together, I’ll remind you of that homeschool mother who murdered her five kids and lump you in with her.
Seems fair to me.
“Since you lump all public schools together, I’ll remind you of that homeschool mother who murdered her five kids and lump you in with her.”
Sure display that great public school education of yours.
There are good teachers but not good too many good schools. Most succumb to the bureaucracy that kills all the others. It was very surprising how many ex teachers home school their own children.
Zero Tolerance = Zero IQ
If you didn’t catch it, the Principal reduced the suspension to 3 days so the Parents could NOT request a hearing. If a suspension is 10 days or more, Parents have the right to request a hearing. Here the Parents thought they were helping their child by getting the suspension reduced to 3 days, in fact, the Principal was covering her tracks so the Parents couldn’t have a hearing which would have made the incident ‘Public’. Wasn’t that nice of that Principal? Here’s the Superintendent’s email address so you can express your dismay directly to Ms. Martin’s boss.
Dr. Camille Castell - casteel.camille@chandler.k12.az.us
Well, they wanted to label junior high boys as sexual predators because they participated in butt slapping. What else is new?
There is nothing new under the sun, according to Ecclesiastes.
I remember a lot of boys drew stuff like that back in the day - all kinds of war scenes. They are still trying to make boys girls.
I’m suggesting that everyone here reading about the “aspiring artist” getting suspended for drawing a picture of a “lazer”, should subscribe to “Guns & Ammo”, “American Rifleman” (includes membership in the NRA), “Shotgun News”, or any other magazine having to do with any firearms, and list Payne Jr High’s principal as the recipient of the magazine. It would be very good if she got more than “a few” magazines every month.
QUEEN Creek, get it.
When my junior high social studies class was doing a segment on World War II, somebody brought in a vintage round of ammo. It was a bullet maybe an inch in diameter (you can see I’m not much of a war gun maven, sorry) still in its metal cartridge. The girl who brought it it said she didn’t know if it was live or not. I wondered what would happen if somebody dropped it rear down to the tile floor from about head height, envisioning a loud bang and the bullet going through the ceiling. (No I did not actually TRY that.)
My granddaughter's second grade teacher found out she had been on the rifle range with me yesterday shooting her .22 (and doing darned well at it), and mentioned she is a skeet shooter...go figure.
I drew aircraft carriers and battleships. I guess today they would think it was a REAL 16 in. turret. or a REAL torpedo.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
LOL. This is a perfect post. Wouldn’t it have been great if the kid had come up with that excuse when caught: “Oh, no, this isn’t a gun. You’re looking at it all wrong. Turn it this way. You see? It’s a low-cost housing project...”
I meant “that was” a perfect post.
The e-mail address for Terry Locke, the idiot mouthpiece for the school district, is: locke.terry@chandler.k12.az.us
Most kids would do better with one on one tutoring but that isn’t always an option.
And obviously you can’t recommend homeschooling for everyone.
There are certainly those who can’t or won’t do the job. I’m sure you don’t want your local welfare queens homeschooling their kids.
Private schools are not necessarily better than public schools, just different. They have drugs, sex, and whacked out teachers, too.
But when you homeschool some how you become beyond criticism and able to pass out judgment with impunity.
I guess holier than thou would be an apt description of some, if not many, especially on FR. These are the ones who most loudly boast about it, for it isn’t really about their kids, it is about their ability to brag about how much more loving they are than ‘regular’ parents.
So it seems ok to you to generalize but you don’t like it in return, right?
Well, some public school systems suck. Garbage in, garbage out. Same with some private schools. And, yes, some home schools, too.
We were rewarded with a nice blob of very hot steel.But fire doesn't melt steel, does it?
In the WTC case, it wasn't necessary to melt steel to collapse the building. The heat was enough to anneal the steel making it too soft to bear the weight of the building. Once the first floor failed, the cascading weight of the floors falling down collapsed the building with ease.
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