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.”
When I was in seventh or eighth grade back in the late 1950s, I wrote a whole paper for a history class on the development of Civil War hand guns and rifles. As I remember, I got a “B” in the days when there wasn’t any grade inflation. Now I’d probably be expelled for a year for having written a whole paper filled with “Columbine-style threats.” Disgusting, and this doesn’t even mention the kid’s free speech rights.
If I had been a student at a school with these sorts of idiotic rules, I would have been expelled by the 5th grade.
A day didn’t go by that I didn’t “doodle” guns in classes when I was bored, which was most of the time.
Mark
A “drawing of a gun” scares them............he, he, he........
In other news, 13 year old Achmed was given the school’s diversity award for his drawing of a dynamite-laden “jihad belt.”
Now that's scary. (Zero tolerance = zero intelligence)
Please let me fix this...
And that is why liberals and people like this have no business in education any position of authority.
Mark
In fact, if the school officials have official mailing addresses, we ought to all draw up little gun pictures and mail them to the administrators responsible for this idiocy.
Mark,
Scholarly work old chap. Most excellent.
That gun has windows and a unicycle wheel.
But even if it had looked liked an actual gun, and he had written “today we killed many Uzbeks” on the bottom, how would this be an suspension offense? Its a picture!
Our children are now in the frontline against the left’s anti-gun agenda: - one badly-drawn bus-pistol-unicycle at a time.
I like the way you think. I think it would be great if all the kids in the school, every single one, draws a gun on their assignment. Let the entire school be suspended for five days. Wouldn’t THAT be a hoot! No money for the school for an entire five days? Bet they’d change their tune real quickly.
If mere drawings of guns are seen as a threat, then how is this nation going to face REAL threats from bad guys with real weapons? Pretty scary to think we are becoming so wimpy.
If you turn the picture over, it almost looks more like a building. Maybe they kid should claim that as his defense.
I just drew a picture of a Mushroom Cloud, am I a Nuclear Power? If I give it to a friend do I violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Too many of our REAL men are in Iraq to be here to fight this insanity. I guess it’s up to the rest of us.
I was thinking the same thing, but I was in school in the 60s. I don't remember drawing guns per se, but almost every day I drew jet planes bristling with guns. Some of them looked pretty cool too!
He loved to 'doodle'...and was a budding artist as well as an exemplary student making excellent grades and respectful of his teachers...
..but one day he too 'drew' a gun on his art paper...
..the teacher saw it, confiscated it and I got a phone call.
Thankfully, it was a 'come in and let's talk about this picture'....and nothing more.
I volunteered at the school and once a year when they allowed 'sidewalk art' with chalk, my son would get much notice because he drew amazingly well & usually had a Christian theme for his art display...
...so maybe the outcome would have been different if we hadn't been 'known'...
Don't know...
Sure. As long as you express what THEY believe. Otherwise.....you're a hater.
That parent needs to GET A LAWYER - NOW!!!!!!!!
The public scrool educrats probably made an error when they denied the aprent a copy of the drawing.
Yeah, the child was damaged by teh stupidity of the educrat.
Copious amounts of cash will help the healing process.
One may hope the jury verdict will include the entirity of the offending educrats’ assets, a large garnishment of all future earnings - including their pension payments, of course.
A one dimensional weapon could injure a dimensional school officials. Therefore, it is a dangerous weapon.
Same here. I wouldn’t have made it past 4th. Grade. When I was in 3rd, our teacher asked us what we wanted to be. I said I wanted to be an F-15 pilot (mid-70’s). She wasn’t phased at all. I grew up with and around a lot of veterans.
Then in 4th grade, my eyes went really nearsighted and stayed that way until getting lasik a couple of years ago. I’m too tall and big to have been one anyway.
School bored me and I drew up all kinds of small arms, armor, planes, ships, and whatnot. Today I would be public school enemy #1.
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