{"id":2710,"date":"2002-05-13T12:01:31","date_gmt":"2002-05-13T17:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=2710"},"modified":"2002-05-13T12:01:31","modified_gmt":"2002-05-13T17:01:31","slug":"bang_bang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/05\/13\/bang_bang.html","title":{"rendered":"Bang, bang"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cool. Not only were seven fourth graders suspended from school for playing “army and aliens,” which game involved “shooting” at each other with pointed fingers, but the school questioned the kids on whether or not their parents own guns<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

Last time I checked, that was still legal.<\/p>\n

Better yet, the story notes that this took place at Dry Creek Elementary School<\/a>, only mile or two from my house (though, mercifully, not in our school district).<\/p>\n

The kids in question were sent home with their parents for the day, though it was not formally listed as a “suspension.” They were also sentenced to a week’s lunchtime detention, on public display. For shooting at each other with their fingers.<\/p>\n

(They’re lucky. In some schools they could have been suspended or even expelled.)<\/p>\n

The school and the Cherry Creek School District both, of course, defend their action as appropriate and in keeping with their dedication toward safety. The rules which the kids evidently broke?<\/p>\n

The Student Policy and Discipline Handbook defines “violent and aggressive behavior” as “threats directed, either orally (including by telephone), by non-verbal gesture, or in writing, at an individual, his or her family or a group.” Under “intimidation\/bullying,” the code includes “any written or verbal expression, physical act or gesture, or a pattern thereof, that is intended to cause distress upon one or more students.”
\nEven without the school policy, zero tolerance is the law in Colorado, considered at the forefront of the movement. Colorado law mandates expulsion for students who “carry, bring, use or possess a firearm or firearm facsimile at school.”
\nNowhere does the law mention fingers, but Mrs. Mickle [the principal] said the conduct code gives administrators the latitude to deal with problems as they arise. “It’s definitely not spelled out in the district discipline policy because we can’t predict what every student is going to do,” she said. “That’s what we’re here for: to interpret those details.”<\/p>\n

Ah. Is that <\/i>what you’re there for?<\/p>\n

Of course, the touted strength of ZT policies is that they are supposed to avoid any sort of namby-pamby interpretation of the rules by laying out in black and white what is always disallowed. Mrs. Mickle’s stance seems to be that it’s perfectly acceptable to extend those rules even further, as the administration sees fit.<\/p>\n

That sounds like a valuable lesson in civics, yessirree.<\/p>\n

The kids, of course, had never been in trouble before, and even though finger-pointing was not explicitly spelled out in the rules, it would have been tantamount to capitulation to the terrorists for the administration to simply warn the kids that what they were doing was wrong.<\/p>\n

But that’s why they call it zero tolerance. “‘No tolerance’ means more than just a warning, because that would mean tolerance,” Mrs. Mickle said.<\/p>\n

As to the inquiry as to whether any of the families had guns in the home?<\/p>\n

“The district must know whether a student has the means to carry out a threat of violence to help us determine the level of the threat of violence against other students or staff,” said Ms. Amole, the spokeswoman.<\/p>\n

Let me make sure I understand. Kids playing “army and aliens” during recess constituted a “threat of violence” to “other students or staff,” therefore the district was entitled to find out if the kids had access to real guns at home, just in case they … what, came back to school and played “army and aliens” with real guns?<\/p>\n

This is getting more and more absurd, and, frankly, more and more scary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cool. Not only were seven fourth graders suspended from school for playing “army and aliens,” which game involved “shooting” at each other with pointed fingers, but the school questioned the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2796,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/09\/20\/bang.html","url_meta":{"origin":2710,"position":0},"title":"Bang","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 20-Sep-02 9:36am","format":false,"excerpt":"Y'know, if there's something that gets the average citizen to press for school vouchers and private alternatives to public education, it's not going to be educational reform or testing or...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2487,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/14\/thank_heavens.html","url_meta":{"origin":2710,"position":1},"title":"Thank heavens","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Jun-02 10:33am","format":false,"excerpt":"I was awfully worried that nearby Dry Creek Elementary might win the Nutty School Administrator Award of the Quarter for punishing kids playing \"Army and Aliens\" during recess (since it...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4237,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/10\/10\/way_to_teach_ab.html","url_meta":{"origin":2710,"position":2},"title":"Way to teach about compassion and civic virtue, guys!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 10-Oct-03 8:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"Just in case you thought real Zero Tolerance stories were becoming difficult to find, the good folks at Caney Creek High near Houston have stepped up to the plate by...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11458,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/08\/23\/everybody_run_juniors_got.html","url_meta":{"origin":2710,"position":3},"title":"Everybody run! 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That.To add to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}