Month: August 2007

When I was in elementary school, I used to draw guns.  I used to draw stick figure armies shooting each other, being strafed by stick figure jets and bombed by stick figure bombers.  There were also stick figure super-heroes firing stick figure lightning bolts.  But there were a lot of stick figures armed with stick guns, shooting stick bullets into each other.

God only knows what institution I’d have ended up in if I’d done that today.  Heck, even drawing one gun, not even shooting, is enough to bring the Wrath of the School Administration on you.

Parents angered by the suspension of their child for drawing a picture of a gun on an assignment paper are questioning the Chandler Unified School District’s policies dealing with such incidents.

The Payne Junior High eighth-grader, along with another student, was suspended Monday for five days. Parents Paula and Ben Mosteller were able to get the suspension reduced to three after meeting with school officials.

The uproar over the drawing, which the student turned in with a school assignment, cuts to the question of what constitutes a “threat.”

Craig Gilbert, Chandler director of secondary education, said there’s a range of punishment administrators can hand down for “implied threats,” ranging from a parent conference to suspension and expulsion.

Well, surely there’s something in the rules about depictions of firearms that should have clued the kid in that he was treading on dangerous territory, right?

There’s nothing in a portion of the student handbook that addresses conduct to indicate the drawing of a weapon poses threat, the television station reported.

There is, however, a rule that says students should not engage in “threatening an educational institution by interference with or disruption of the school.”

Well, that’s perfectly clear.  It must be that the drawing was a particularly horrible warning about impending violence, right?

The boy’s parents said the drawing was a harmless doodle and school officials overreacted.  The drawing did not show blood, bullets, injuries or target any human, the parents said.

Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the crude sketch was “absolutely considered a threat,” and that threatening words or pictures are punishable.

Hmmm.  Is there a difference between something being threatening and something being considered a threat?

It’s noteworthy that, if it was “absolutely considered a threat,” one wonders why (a) the police weren’t contacted, or (b) some sort of psych evaluation or counseling wasn’t performed.  Or, for that matter, why the five day suspension was reduced to three.

But let’s get back to that threatening picture.  Sure, the parents are going to deny it’s “threatening” — but it must have been truly terrifying, right?  I mean, look at that thing — those fiendish happy faces, those demonic little figures running around it, that rakishly menacing angle!

(One caveat.  That’s a recreation by the student of the drawing.  The original drawing is locked away by the school, for fear of the terrifying reaction it might cause, and the parents were not allowed a copy.  Another version is here, sans the horrifying happy faces)

Of course, here’s my favorite part.  The district, under pressure from the press, passed the buck back to the school, since any suspension under 10 days is solely at the principals’ discretion, not subject to review or appeal.  Better yet, the principal and the school and the district decline to say anything more about it.

 Payne principal Karen Martin did not return a phone call seeking comment.

The public often does not have access to the full story when it comes to student discipline because of privacy laws.

School officials have put the student’s sketch in his file, which is not open to the public. And since school officials did not call the police, there’s no public police record.

“Federal privacy laws forbid discussing student discipline,” Locke said. “From a district point of view, it’s over.”

With the parents in a public tizzy about it, using “federal privacy laws” as a shield against accountability seems pretty lame.  But that seems par for the course for this particular story.

After sitting through a lecture on Columbine (where, of course, it wasn’t drawings of guns that were the problem), the father talked the principal into dropping the suspension from 5 days to 3 (another sign of how “absolutely threatening” the drawing was).  Alas, the parents aren’t going to fight the matter any further,  since they and the kid are new to the area and don’t want to cause future problems.  Aside from, you know, the kid now having a suspension record in his school file for threatening the school.

(via Les)