Bet this kid turns out to be a faith or reiki healer.

I can just imagine it... 2,000 years ago... little apprentice Jesus is laying his hands on the local carpenter master to heal his leg and the carpenter shouts "Sexual harassment!" Then Jesus is so freaked out he never heals anyone again.

It will be better in the long run if gets expelled. Children don't belong in public schools -- the data shows they just get duller and less inquisitive year-on-year.

Why the hell is his teacher working with kids if she can't tolerate being touched by one? I really doubt that the little guy was coming on to her, though he's got the right moves.

But there's probably more to this story, if he's already been suspended 3 times. Maybe he's prone to inappropriate touching. The schools are so procrustean nowadays regarding physical contact and whatnot that it's very easy for a kid who's behavior is slightly out of the norm to run afoul of the rules.

SUspended 3 times? I can't imagine all of that was hysteria, even though this incident sure seems to have been. So what is wrong with the kid? Maybe the teacher simply wanted him gone because of whatever caused the other 3 suspensions? Texas doesn't seem to have the school craziness other places have-I can't fathom what it would take for a 6 year old to be suspended, much less expelled, here. So that may be coloring my opinion, but kids sounds very troubled.

"Texas doesn't seem to have the school craziness other places have..."

Except for that whole, "let's not mention Thomas Jefferson in American history" thing. ;)

I'm kidding about that, but I taught 8th grade in North Carolina for a few years before being laid off due to budget cuts. I can say that I'm definitely with you on not being able to imagine what would have caused this child to be suspended four times. I had a child threaten me in class, saying that if I didn't shut up he was going to "whip my ass," and that only got him one day of in school suspension. He wasn't even expelled after an armed robbery on another student, but sent to an "alternative" school. I would imagine there's a whole lot more to this story, although it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the school is overreacting, either.

I had a child threaten me in class, saying that if I didn't shut up he was going to "whip my ass,"

This is precisely why I couldn't be a teacher. I would have said "ok, here's the deal: we're going to step outside. If you whip my ass fair and square, I'll shut up. If I whip your ass, you'll pay attention and do your homework and work at geting a good grade."

The only thing I can come up with is that the teacher wanted him gone. My money says that his teacher wouldn't have reported the "incident" if it were a kid she liked.

If I had told a teacher I was going to whip his or her posterior; I would have been whipped in school, and again at home. That would have been the end of it. No suspension, no expulsion, no lawyer, no Child Protective Services, no newspaper article.

Are people really so incompetent that they can't handle a six year old without making the national news?

Reading the article:

This is charter school who expelled the student.
There's a judge in Philadelphia that overruled and ordered him accepted back into class - 13 months later.

This goes along with the suggestion of a few other commenters that they were looking for an excuse to expel this student.

I think schools should be able to expel students without giving a reason - let alone defending it in court. A great many behavior problems will go away if the kids know they can get kicked out. And that will make life much better for students who want to attend school and learn.

This situation is unlikely to be about sex and much more likely to be about some power issue with the kid and the teacher that has become an issue between the law, charter schools, and other government agencies that don't want charter schools.

I found another report with more detail here. One of his previous suspensions was that he touched a girl's bottom while he was under her desk trying to retrieve a dropped crayon. The other two were for, and I quote, "stepping on his classmates' shoelaces or otherwise tripping or shoving them". In other words, they don't really know what happened, but figured they'd blame because they consider him a troublemaker.

It does sound like the kid is boisterous and a handful in the classroom, but we all know what the answer to that is -- take the kids out and run them around to get rid of that energy. Touching the girls' bottom is just the sort of things kids do; kids that age are curious about bodies, and whatever taboos used to exist about public discussion or exposure of rear ends are pretty much gone.

According to the report, the boy is now in a private school and has had no behavior problems there. It could be that the charter school just was a poor fit for him; it happens sometimes. What I find disturbing is the Philadelphia's attempts to sexualize his behavior in an attempt to cover its own ass, as you can see near the end of the report. They want desperately to brand him as a sex criminal, despite the fact that the teacher admitted in court that they routinely hug in the classroom, and that she was unable to define the line between appropriate and inappropriate touching. If the teacher can't define it, how are the students supposed to? The Philadelphia school district is willing to destroy a 6-year-old's life just so they don't have to admit that their precious bureaucracy screwed up. That's sick and disgusting.

Or maybe he did touch the girl's butt, on purpose. I had a male student rip my damn pantihose in the middle of class once and try to reach up them. And maybe he is intentionally tripping and hurting kids. Who knows? I'm betting the people dealing with it, better than we.

and how do you show the kid boundries? by showing him if he pushes enough he gets out of school? The teacher could have fixed this immediately... But as elsewhere mentioned, the easiest way to get a kid gone, is to allow him to break rules enough to get thrown out. Had the same problem with #1son and his 5th grade teacher. Even though she was supposed to be an award winning specialist in gifted and twice exceptional students, she refused to do anything with a twice exceptional kid with a hint of asperger's. He was in the principal's office a lot that year. Miraculously the very next year, the teachers thought he was a joy, and very challenging. Didn't mean he didn't get in trouble. What it meant was that they didn't bail on him.

Hopefully the kid prospers at his new school, before he comes to the realization that every adult around him is stupid.

"Or maybe he did touch the girl's butt, on purpose. "

Oh, I have no doubt that he did it on purpose. That's not the point. The mistake being made is sexualizing it. Guess what? Girls that age touch boys' butts too. They don't do it as a come-on because at that age they don't understand what a come-on is. They're curious. There is no sexual content, except in the infantile pee-pee-ca-ca kind of way. They're curious. Now, obviously you have to teach them boundaries. But there are appropriate and inappropriate measures for doing that. The teacher freaking out and going all Miss Grundy on him, for doing something similar to something else that he's been taught is OK, only teaches the boy that females are irrational and cannot be trusted.

Yes, we can teach our boys to avoid everything that might possibly get them accused of sexual harassment, for the purpose of keeping them out of trouble in school. In fact, in this day and age, where one false move at the age of 6 gets you put on the sex offenders' list for life, that teaching might be very necessary. But what kind of lesson do the boys learn about women from this? When they become adults, how are they supposed to have a healthy relationship with a woman when they've been taught all their lives that women are fragile china who will shatter if you so much as look at them the wrong way?

The school district trying to paint the kid as a little pervert is a problem- but if he's a distraction and a discipline problem regularly, I think the expulsion is warranted. Perhaps moving him to another teacher's class would've been effective, but we wouldn't know. If this were a private school, the expulsion wouldn't be an issue.

This is a statement from the school we want our kid to go to:

"XXXX Hall School, like the parent, wants each child to find the best environment for the
development of his/her specific capabilities. XXXX Hall School is staffed to suit a very
specific learning situation. There are some types of problems we are not staffed to
handle. The child who does not enjoy a learning situation or disrupts it for others does
not receive the proper care here and for his or her own benefit as well as that of the
classmates, should be at a school more suited to his interests."

To me it sounds like the school just wasn't a good fit... and if he's doing just fine at a different school, everyone involved is likely better off.

I'll also say that if the teachers and administration had labeled my kid a "problem child," I'd be looking for another school. Once a kid has been labeled that way, I think it's very hard for him to get a fair shake (because the teachers in the next grade already "know" Little Johnny is a terror from previous reports- even if the real problem is with an individual teacher). Oh, and I'd also work to solve whatever the behavioral issue was.

"To me it sounds like the school just wasn't a good fit."

I think that sums up the story from the kids' perspective. He's fortunate in that his parents can apparently afford to send him to a private school. Lots of kids in his situation are stuck -- if the parents can't afford private school, home schooling is not an option for whatever reason, and they don't have the political connections to game the school zoning, then as you say the kid is going to get labeled and he'll likely fail.

The 'school district' isn't trying to get rid of him. It's a single charter school.

That the kid hasn't been reported as a behavior problem at the private school is a bit of evidence against the school (but not real proof - it could be that the other school is oblivious).

We don't really know why the teacher at the charter school wanted him out. In which case, I think I'd go with the teacher until that teacher shows a pattern of mistakes.

It's possible for a 6 year old to be sexually inappropriate. Some (rare) kids have such patterns.

It's more common for a teacher to decide some kid is 'bad' and then find lots of confirmation for her bias.

I'd avoid trying to decide who's telling the truth based on two short articles about the child.

"Charter schools aren't private schools, are they?"

No, they're publicly funded. There's different ways that one can be put together. Around here, they usually pop up as the result of the school board wanting to close a particular school (for low enrollment or whatever), and a parents' group agrees to charter the school and take over its direction in order to keep the school open. The ones here mostly specialize in particular subjects. In some other parts of the country, I know that there are educational corporations that will get a charter for a school and get paid to run it.

The big difference between charters and regular schools is that charters are held to performance standards. If those aren't met, the school board can withdraw the charter and either give it to someone else, or close the school.

I think that the other big difference is that charter schools have more choice as to which kids they'll accept. So, while they might be held to performance standards, they also don't have to take everyone in the neighborhood, like a regular public school would.

...of course, it varies by state. In TX, they can write into their charter that they won't take kids with discipline problems. Officially, though, they're open enrollment.

That the child -- so far -- hasn't been reprimanded for behavioral issues at his new school may mean his parents finally read him the riot act. Maybe he was a chronic, low-grade pain in the arse at the old school and maybe the school was trying to get rid of him.

There ARE children who are just seriously annoying day-in and day-out, and they're usually the ones whose parents excuse every bit of their bad behavior with "he's just naturally boisterous", or "he has a lot of energy".

The girl's butt thing is a problem. We had three 13 year old boys lay in wait for a classmate and then proceed to fondle her. At least one boy raped her. Yeah, he's six, but these incidents seem to involve younger and younger kids.

The teacher absolutely should have made a big deal about it.

And maybe he has a history of over-sexualized behaviors, in which case the leg-touching thing with the oh-so-wide-eyed-and-innocent excuse is really kind of creepy. Heck, if a six year old started massaging my leg (do we know how high on her thigh? Do we really know all the details?), I'd be creeped out. That's odd to me and unwelcome and I'd put a stop to it and let him know that it's inappropriate.

You can get all hysterical in either direction -- the suspension was too harsh, not harsh enough, whatever. I've been around long enough to give the school the benefit of the doubt. I'm also tired of parents who use the courts to resolve these issues. Parents like that are usually the ones who create the troublemakers out of either disinterest or overindulgence, and when the crap hits the fan, they blame everyone else.

Oops! Should have finished that thought -- we had 3 13 year old boys, etc., "in a nearby school district".