Posted on 10/16/2009 10:56:47 AM PDT by broken_arrow1
Call him Mr. Zero Tolerance.
The upstate New York school superintendent who suspended an Eagle Scout for 20 days for keeping a 2-inch utility knife locked in his car is unwilling to speak to the teen's family or bend in his ruling.
Lansingburgh Central School District Superintendent George J. Goodwin, 55, said in a written statement that his district "has an established policy of zero tolerance with respect to the possession of weapons of any kind on school property or in school buildings."
But nowhere in the school district's rule book, which is published online, is there any mention of a "zero tolerance" policy, leading some to question whether Goodwin, in fact, was compelled to suspend the youth.
Seventeen-year-old Matthew Whalen, a senior at Lansingburgh High School in Troy, N.Y., says he got in trouble over a survival kit he keeps in his car that includes a sleeping bag, water, a ready-to-eat meal and the small pocketknife, which was given to him by his grandfather, a police chief in a nearby town.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Homeschooling is tough and takes a lot of time and resources to be effective. God bless those that do. Private school is expensive and many cannot afford it.
Here is a secret. It is my own thought and I have no empirical proof. Don't tell anyone they'll legislate it. Are you ready?
More and more private schools are opening and enrollment in these schools are skyrocketing. The enrollment in most public schools is not going up as fast as they should considering population migration and growth...(this is the secret part)...It may be affecting the average scores on national tests as the more involved families sacrifice to send their kids to better schools.
The jack itself could also be used to kill someone. As could the car.
This is the result of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and their ilk pitching meritless law suits and general harassment about how black students got into worse trouble with multiple-purpose tools than white students did. Screw looking at the BEHAVIOR surrounding the incident.
No more metal shop or home economics! (Torches, hot stoves, knives, drills, other sharp tools.)
The 1397th reason for America to vote to turn the makeup of Congress upside down in 2010 and 2012.
Don’t you also suppose they have some SHARP knives in the teacher’s lounge, for cutting bagels, etc.? Isn’t it reasonable that a student could force his way into the lounge behind a faculty member (assuming the room is kept locked and/or uses a security pad)?
bttt
Spot on. With all due respect and exemption to the "good" teachers, the government workers in education are obviously deemed so incompetent that they are forbidden to THINK and are thus given black and white rules, processes and procedures to follow for any given circumstance. Zero Tolerance removes the need for any intelligence with regards to good judgement. A monkey can be trained to a zero tolerance policy and a computer could be created to make a better judgement.
These loonatics should mix in some If=Then statements to their ZERO TOLERANCE stupidity.
40 years ago every school boy had a pocket knife and a whetstone. No problems were ever encountered because of them.
I read in an old magazine of a kid taking an origional Bowie knife to school for “show and tell”, and I remember a kid taking an original 1812 military pistol to school for the same reason.
Our local school expelled a boy several years ago for taking a hunting knife to school to give it to another student the day before hunting season opened.
Even my supervisor, who was on the school board voted for the expulsion. I could not believe it as he was a farm raised kid!
Today these idiots running these schools would go into “lockdown” and pee all over themselves.
What has happened to the US! They act as if they had been caught by someone with a pair of Burduzios in their youth!
This is a policy that is COUNTRY WIDE in all our schools.
The Zero Policy was enacted by brain-dead knee-jerkers after Columbine. They thought nothing through and all public school personnel have had the training.
The results are that this is happening all over the country with bizarre results.
If you've had your head buried in the sand, you might want to come up for air and recognize that this Cretin of a principal is the NORM now.
See my post #68
Political correctness, 0 tolerance, chairman Mao is smiling today.
Well, we must raise heck country wide.
I don’t think Columbine nearly as much as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
What prompted these gov’t school morons to want to look in his trunk in the first place?
What they are given is a statement that says
if you use your judgement instead of sticking to zero tolerance,
the district will not back you in any civil case against you.
And the item in question is NOT A WEAPON under NY law.
I went on the District's web site and could not find his bio. If he has his "degrees" in the field of "Education" then he does not have an education. They are just paper and not backed up by any real matriculation.
This is the continued assault on the remains of our free society. You must be tough and smart to be free and maintain your liberties and these pantywaist liberals have made it illegal to be and do the things necessary to be a free person.
Yeah, I do wonder why the question came up in the first place.
Some jealous gay nerd ratted, is my guess.
These guys have even intimidated airline TSA folks into allowing them to carry daggers on plans and in Canada have won the right to bring them to school
http://www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/na.cgi?nationalupdates/060309daggers
Canada is so PC-correct and even they let Sikhs bring daggers to school. So zero tolerance should be off the table.
I think that the Eagle Scout should have made a religious argument that his scouting oath requires him to be prepared and that includes a pocket knife in his car, and by the way he is considering converting to the Sikh faith.
50 years ago boys in Baltimore city could take their pistols to school on the transit bus if they were on the pistol team. The shooting range was in the basement of a very large public school.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.