Who gets the penalty for bringing an idiot into a school building and calling it an administrator?

I always like to quote George Carlin in these situations: "You know who had zero tolerance? Hitler."

Making drug jokes gets you out of school for 45 days?

Wow.

OK, fuck the school for a moment, I'd talk to all the parents I could, describe the situation, and suggest the following:

Me: Parents, as you know my child made a joke the other day about having marijuana in his possession. In fact, it was oregano. Now I'm not unreasonable, we all want to keep our children from using drugs. But we have to know the difference between children's jokes and drug use. Was it an appropriate joke or not? Well kids tell jokes, some of them we don't laugh at, but they do. If they can suspend my kid for 45 days, they can do the same for your kids for any little thing.

So I suggest that we have all of our children tell the same joke in the cafeteria. Encourage all the children we can to tell it as well.

The school cannot empty its hallways, and it will have to start using its brain instead of its idiotic rulebook.

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The way I see it, zero tolerance does not exist for the kids, it doesn't exist for safety, it exists only so administrators don't have to do any thinking, any working, or exercise any judgement at all. It exists so that our paid public workers can be lazy and avoid punishment for being lazy.

Before long, breathing will be a criminal act in schools, because a breathing person could possibly attack another person with a pencil or another weapon.

No, not even that. A breathing person is expelling CO2, a pollutant as decreed by another nanny group, the EPA, so he must go.

It's fascinating to watch how far this farce goes before the sheeple wake up and rebel. I'm betting they'll never really wake up, at least till it's too late.

Anyway, it's all just a diversion to keep us from noticing that the politicians and their buddies are bankrupting the government, and that we are all heading for Greece times 100.

Maybe school administrators aren't actually human...they are human-appearing androids created in a scientific experiment intended to produce industrial robots. But the androids turned out to be unusable for factory work because of their excessive rigidity and lack of any context-sensitivity, so they were sold instead as school administrators.

Not buying this.

By the same reasoning a kid with a baggy of powder that he says is anthrax or cocaine does no wrong as long as it is powdered sugar. A kid with a fake gun, grenade or bomb is just joking.

"Kidding!" wink wink.

No.

Amy, asshats bringing baggies of powder or even oregano or pills that are just vitamin C are persona non grata. I couldn't give shit about libertarian principles. They can have their principles elsewhere. Your house, your principles. Public school is not your house.

"By the same reasoning a kid with a baggy of powder that he says is anthrax or cocaine does no wrong as long as it is powdered sugar. A kid with a fake gun, grenade or bomb is just joking."

Laura, the difference is that in your examples (except for the cocaine example), a threat is being made. If I rob a gas station by sticking a finger in my coat pocket and telling the clerk that I have a gun, then I've committed armed robbery even though I had no gun -- because my threat is based on the viable pretense of having a gun. Threatening violence is not protected by the First Amendment; I think we can agree on that. In the case of the kid from Waxhaw (I've been there, BTW), there was no threat being made. The kid wasn't threatening to dump marijuana into the cafeteria food or anything like that.

Kids bringing baggies of anything like in the story is inappropriate for school. Full stop. No exceptions.

Who exactly is supposed to be in charge of testing baggies of powder or greens or pills brought in to the schools to see if it is forbidden, or illegal, or toxic or not?

Zero tolerance is one thing. But why do these robotic school administrators believe it in any way means the exact penalty for all deviations large and small?

When I was handling discipline cases for a natonal manufacturing company we applied the rules equally. But, (and here is where common sense and logic come into play) the penalty was based on the type of violation. In other words, each case was handled on its own merits.

A minor violation of a rule was given a different penalty than a major violation of the same rule. Zero tolerance with realistic application of penalties.

Why can't these highly educate school administrators figure that out?

Who exactly is supposed to be in charge of testing baggies of powder or greens or pills brought in to the schools to see if it is forbidden, or illegal, or toxic or not?

Great point, but then who do we know whether or not the baggies or pills or turkey sandwiches brought in by TEACHERS are toxic or illegal?

Why is the school not Amy's house? If she pays property taxes (or pays rent to someone who does because he certainly includes his property taxes in her rent) it absolutely is her house. And it's my house, and your house, and every other tax payer's house. It's also certainly the house of the parents of the children who attend, give that they have to live in the district to attend.

However, give those of us who prefer liberty a refund on our taxes and allow us to opt out of sending our children (if we have them) to the school and then I don't care what idiotic policies they have.

Until then, damn yes it's my house. And they need to stop doing this stupid stuff.

Laura, I agree that some kind of punishment would have been appropriate -- detention for a week, or some such. But the punishment was way over the top. When we do stupid stuff like that, we give kids the message that adults just make up arbitrary rules and really don't have a clue.

"Who exactly is supposed to be in charge of testing baggies of powder or greens or pills brought in to the schools to see if it is forbidden, or illegal, or toxic or not? "

How do we know the oregano on a kid's sandwich isn't pot? How do we know the powdered sugar on a donut isn't cocaine? How do we know a kid's cotton shirt isn't really explosive nitrocellulose? Does every single thing that comes in the door need to be tested? If the answer is "yes", what's the difference between that and helicopter parenting?

LauraGr, Cousin Dave has made most of the point, but I'll expand this:

The appearance of a baggie of powder has nothing - zero point zip - to do with a threat to anyone. You have mistaken one scenario for the entire problem of eliminating threats, much like those helpful uniformed persons at the airport.

I wouldn't make a baggie of anthrax any less horrible by dropping a chicken wing in the baggie.

THINK.

Most of this goes on because people have no idea what constitutes a threat, a weapon -- even a crime.

Think about these things, and be sure you know.

Okay I will bite, I have over the years suspended many students for fake contraband at school. On fake weapons, most of the states have passed laws that mandate the same penalty for fake guns and knives as real ones. Now 45 days is just plain stupid and I will not debate that, I usually gave 3-5 days home and the NRS state that presenting a fake as the real substance at school is a crime so they get a citation (NOT ARREST). It is not a discretionary area for school administrators. We know the difference, but Jimmy's mom is scared and angry that Suzy pointed a gun (black painted wood block) at her son and yells at state rep Dumass Id-iot who passes a feel good law. Drugs, I thought of as more a safety thing, if you sell a fake to people, they might get mad and try to hurt you at school and I have to worry about that, or some students might desire your stuff and hurt you while taking it and then again because it is fake. So, it might not be the admin or district, a lot of these Zero –Brains laws are direct from the lawmakers.