Maryland school suspends six-year-old boy

[Focal]

Haha. Place them on problematic precipitation perception probation.

 

[Dennis Hultman]

Twist.............

Teacher suspended


Teacher Sues School over Suspension for 'Weapons' Charge: Showing Students Garden Tools

http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-banni...ension-weapons-charge-showing-students-garden

Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a civil rights lawsuit against a Chicago public school district on behalf of a second-grade teacher who was suspended after he displayed garden-variety tools such as wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers in his classroom as part of a "tool discussion" in his class.

Despite the fact that all potentially hazardous items were kept out of the students' reach, school officials at Washington Irving Elementary School informed Doug Bartlett, a 17-year veteran in the classroom, that his use of the tools as visual aids endangered his students. Bartlett was subsequently penalized with a four-day suspension without pay - charged with possessing, carrying, storing or using a weapon.

The complaint charges that Bartlett "suffered humiliation, embarrassment, mental suffering, and lost wages, and was suspended for four days" - and asks for "nominal and compensatory damages" and for the suspension to be expunged from the teacher's record.

"This school district's gross overreaction to a simple teaching demonstration on basic tools such as wrenches and pliers underscores exactly what is wrong with our nation's schools," said Rutherford Institute Pres. John Whitehead.

"What makes this case stand out from the rest is that this latest victim of zero tolerance policies run amok happens to be a veteran school teacher," Whitehead said.

None of the tools were made accessible to the students. When not in use, the tools were secured in a toolbox on a high shelf out of reach of the students. They were used to demonstrate the proper use of tools.

 

[WebSlave]

What will the schools do when someone demonstrates how easy it is to kill someone with a pencil? And one of the worst fates imaginable would be death by paper cuts.

 

[JColt]

Not to mention death by juice straw!

 

[Dennis Hultman]

2 Va. Boys Suspended For Using Pencils As Guns

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/05/07/2-va-boys-suspended-for-using-pencils-as-guns/

SUFFOLK, Va. — Two Suffolk second graders have been suspended for making shooting noises while pointing pencils at each other.

Media outlets report the 7-year-old boys were suspended for two days for a violation of the Suffolk school system’s zero-tolerance policy on weapons. They were playing with one another in class Friday at Driver Elementary.

“When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,’” said Paul Marshall, one of the boys’ fathers. “It’s as simple as that.”

Marshall, a former Marine, said he believes school officials overreacted.

But Suffolk Public Schools spokeswoman Bethanne Bradshaw said a pencil is considered a weapon when it’s pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made.

“Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community,” Bradshaw said. “Kids don’t think about ‘Cowboys and Indians’ anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day.”

Bradshaw said the policy has been in place for at least two decades. It also bans drawing a picture of a gun and pointing a finger in a threatening manner.

Marshall said his son has good grades and no history of being disruptive in class. On the suspension note, the teacher noted that the boy stopped when she told him to do so.

He said school administrators failed to use common sense.

“Enough is enough,” said Paul Marshall. “I see it as the tail is now wagging the dog.”

Bradshaw said the suspensions were effective Monday and Tuesday.

“It’s an effort to try to get kids not to bring any form of violence, even if it’s violent play, into the classroom,” Bradshaw said. “There has to be a consequence because it’s a rule. And it’s a rule that the principals go over.”

 

[AbsoluteApril]

2 Va. Boys Suspended For Using Pencils As Guns

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/05/07/2-va-boys-suspended-for-using-pencils-as-guns/

a little more on this same story, also a video at the bottom of the link
http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/-two-boys-suspended-for-pointing-pencils-like-guns-165811733.html

A 7-year-old boy, who was suspended for two days after playing a game of make-believe with his friend, returned to school on Wednesday.

On Friday, Christopher Marshall, a second grader at Driver Elementary School in Suffolk, Virginia and his classmate were playing with their pencils, pointing them at each other and making machine gun noises when a concerned teacher pulled them into the principals' office.

"I got a call from Christopher's school at 12:30 on Friday," the boy's mother, Wendy Marshall, 34, a stay-at-home mother of five, told Yahoo! Shine. "His teacher told me that Christopher and his friend were playing with pencils, making machine gun and 'bang bang' noises. I asked if they were pointing the pencils at anyone else, if they were angry or hostile, disrupting class, or refused to stop when asked and the teacher said no. I told her that I would speak to Christopher but his teacher said she was under obligation to report them anyway."

Wendy immediately picked up her son from school and when she got there, the principal explained that due to the school's zero tolerance policy against weapons or anything that resembles a weapon, Christopher would be suspended on Monday and Tuesday, allowed to return on Wednesday. Bethanne Bradshaw, a spokesperson for Suffolk Public Schools could not be reached for comment but according to a report from Fox43 she said, "A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made" and that "Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community. Kids don't think about 'Cowboys and Indians' anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day." According to the Suffolk News-Herald, the school had received hundreds of emails and on one day fielded about 75 phone calls per hour regarding the matter. Bradshaw wrote in an email to the paper that the reaction to the incident was overwhelming. “Opinions were very strong and mean-spirited, and often included abusive language and profanity.”

"I told the principal that Christopher's father is an ex-Marine and he was just emulating his dad," said Wendy. "Apparently the students were told at the beginning of the year that they couldn't pretend that objects were guns—there are only four weeks left in school. How could they remember that? Kids need to be reminded to bathe and brush their teeth. Besides, they were just being boys. The disciplinary report will be on Christopher's record forever." The report, below, was provided by the Marshall family.

Wendy took her son home and asked him to explain what happened. "He was shaking with fear and didn't understand why he was in trouble," she said. "So we reenacted the scene and I told him that he did nothing wrong." Christopher's father alerted the local news station and Wendy and Christopher spent the next two days eating ice cream, playing Mario Go Kart on Wii, and cleaning the house. "I let him drink soda too," she says. "I'm not going to punish him."

Wendy did not want to identify Christopher's friend but she says she believes he got a similar punishment. "I would understand the school's point better if the kids were older and they were being hostile toward each other," she says. "But these kids were laughing and playing and Christopher is being made into an example, which isn't right."

 

[WebSlave]

I can't WAIT to see the US Army of the future....... All the new recruits are going to actually be AFRAID to handle a gun.

Seriously, "GUN NOISES" are against school policy?

And btw, has anyone ever asked a kid what sort of punishment it is to be told you can't come back to school for three days? Wish I had been smarter when I was a kid and figured that one out.

 

[Metachrosis]

Read up on todays military . . . . . . "Their here"!!
Push button cowards and equality has long since taken its toll on the defending forces

I can't WAIT to see the US Army of the future....... All the new recruits are going to actually be AFRAID to handle a gun.

 

[Metachrosis]

Lame someone says . . . . . clearly clueless the current military stats regarding psychotropic dependent enlisted.

 

[Durante]

Lame someone says . . . . . clearly clueless the current military stats regarding psychotropic dependent enlisted.

Funny thing about that is there was a point, not to long ago, where you would not be accepted to at least certain branches at all. You could of been young in unbelievable physical shape & party drug free only to have a recruiter stand you up.

 

[Metachrosis]

Nope! couldnt let it rest
You clueless opinionated 's think you have the world by the sack
Hang this in your "l a m e "
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/24/this-could-be-the-most-haunting-statistic-youll-ever-see/

Plenty more factual data to be viewed, "in a very clear timeline" if you remove yourselves from your demi'god (gotthewholeFnworldfiguredoutandundermy thumb)thrones and . . . . . . . .

In case you missed the first link in between eating your crayons
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/24/this-could-be-the-most-haunting-statistic-youll-ever-see/

 

[Dennis Hultman]

Suspended From School For Merely TALKING About Guns
http://pro.wmal-af.tritonflex.com/c...+Merely+TALKING+About+Guns&id=26543&is_corp=0

OWINGS, MD -- The father of a middle schooler in Calvert County, Md. says his 11-year-old son was suspended for 10 days for merely talking about guns on the bus ride home.

Bruce Henkelman of Huntingtown says his son, a sixth grader at Northern Middle School in Owings, was talking with friends about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre when the bus driver hauled him back to school to be questioned by the principal, Darrel Prioleau.

"The principal told me that with what happened at Sandy Hook if you say the word 'gun' in my school you are going to get suspended for 10 days," Henkelman said in an interview with WMAL.com.

So what did the boy say? According to his father, he neither threatened nor bullied anyone.

"He said, I wish I had a gun to protect everyone. He wanted to defeat the bad guys. That's the context of what he said," Henkelman said. "He wanted to be the hero."

The boy was questioned by the principal and a sheriff's deputy, who also wanted to search the family home without a warrant, Henkelman said. "He started asking me questions about if I have firearms, and [the deputy said] he's going to have to search my house. Search my house? I just wanted to know what happened."

No search was performed, and the deputy left Henkelman's home after the father answered questions in a four-page questionnaire issued by the Sheriff's Office.

Principal Darrel Prioleau did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment. Robin Welsh, the deputy superintendent of Calvert County Schools, said federal privacy rules prohibited her from commenting on a specific case, but she said students are not suspended without cause.

"There has to be some violation within the code of conduct that would trigger some type of consequence or intervention," said Welsh, who said the county school system does not have a zero tolerance policy.

Based on information about Henkelman's case provided by WMAL.com, the ACLU of Maryland said the suspension, later reduced to one day, was a poor choice by school administrators.

"It's appropriate for school officials to investigate when there is a concern about student safety. But based on what's been described to us, once the school official concluded that all the young man wanted to do was to be safe at school and that he posed no risk to anyone, the suspension was really inappropriate," said Sonya Kumar, an ACLU staff attorney.

"The school should have been assuring him that they were going to take steps to keep all students safe, not punishing him," she added.

Henkelman said the incident happened last December right before students were sent home for winter break, but he did not feel compelled to take his story to the public until he learned that a 5-year-old Calvert County boy was suspended for bringing a toy cap gun on a school bus.

"[My son] was very scared at the fact that he was interviewed by the principal and a sheriff's deputy alone. He didn't know where I was," Henkelman said.

The ACLU's Kumar said there are too many cases of school officials coming down hard on students for relatively harmless offenses.

"Across the board, we are concerned about practices where we have these sort of knee-jerk reactions without really stopping to think and use our common sense about whether what a kid is doing or saying actually presents any sort of concern for the safety and well-being of others," Kumar said.

 

[Metachrosis]

Sickining liberal crap

 

[Dennis Hultman]

Elementary School Beginning Toy Gun Turn-In Program

Strobridge Elementary Principal Charles Hill has a brilliant idea: he’s holding a toy gun exchange next Saturday in which students of the Hayward, CA school can turn in a toy gun to receive a book and a raffle ticket to win one of four bicycles.

Really.

Hill believes that children who play with toy guns may not think real guns are dangerous. “Playing with toy guns, saying ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ desensitizes them, so as they get older, it’s easier for them to use a real gun,” he claims.

Hill was inspired by a school photographer, Horace Gibson, who was upset about the number of police shootings of young people in Oakland.

At Strobridge Elementary Safety Day, a local policeman will demonstrate bicycle and gun safety, (does he get to use a real gun?), while the Alameda County Fire Department will speak about fire safety. Just to show that local governments can do surveillance too, there will be opportunities for the children to be fingerprinted and photographed, with that information transferred to CD’s if it is ever needed for a missing child case.

Hill, defending his take-away program, asserted that police are justifiably afraid when they face armed suspects, and toy guns have been mistaken for real ones.

But Yih-Chau Chang, spokesman for Responsible Citizens of California, said, ”Having a group of children playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians is a normal part of growing up.”

 

[Dennis Hultman]

 

[WebSlave]

So First Amendment rights have been tossed right out the window too? Your Second Amendment rights were already rescinded.

School properties are Constitution-Free zones completely?

I really, REALLY resent that I am paying to support the public school system via my taxes.

 

[Dennis Hultman]

Not surprised again that youtube/google is suspending accounts and forcing others to remove videos again. Half the videos in this thread are no longer here or the account has been terminated by youtube.

 

[WebSlave]

Yeah, there is just no way that the government is going to allow unrestricted freedom on the internet. And also reason that all this blather about disbanding the IRS is NEVER going to happen. The IRS is the main weapon of the US government. They can put anyone they want to into a very deep hole by setting the IRS upon them with eternal audits. So do you think the gov is really going to give that up?

 

[Metachrosis]

hasnt even starting getting bad yet . . . . . . but its not like we didn't see this coming
Get ready for some sparks to fly here in a month or so,conservative speculation suggest
ALOT of really smart people are going to get their dress blown up pretty good

 

[Metachrosis]

"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American," Snowden responded, "and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, (Sen. Dianne) Feinstein, and (Rep. Peter) King, the better off we all are."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/17/nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-online/2430451/

NSA leaker Edward Snowden, answering questions Monday in a live blog on his revelations about the top-secret agency, denied charges he was spying for China and vowed to release more details on the NSA's "direct access" to the tech companies' servers
"Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped," Snowden said, according to The Guardian, which held the "live chat" on its website.
He said the U.S. government "is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me."
Snowden, a former NSA contractor who fled the United States after revealing top-secret details on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, has said he "does not expect to see home again."
Snowden, who took immediate refuge in Hong Kong, also denied any plans to give information to China in exchange for asylum.
Former vice president Dick Cheney told Fox News Sunday that he thinks Snowden is a "traitor" and warned that the analyst may be spying for the Chinese government.
"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American," Snowden responded, "and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, (Sen. Dianne) Feinstein, and (Rep. Peter) King, the better off we all are."
He called Cheney "a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up" for the war in Iraq.
" Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now," he said.
Snowden did not elaborate on when he would reveal more information, but said, "the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc., analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on -- it's all the same."
SIGINT refers to "Signals Intelligence," or the collected communciations data.
He said the restrictions to getting such data is "policy-based, not technically based, and can change at any time."
In response to a question as to why he fled to Hong Kong, Snowden said the U.S. government "immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home" and declared him guilty of treason.
"That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it," he wrote.
He also suggested that it was easier to go to Hong Kong rather than risk being intercepted and arrested on the way to Iceland, another potential safe haven.
3 NSA veterans: 'We told you so'
On other issues:
• Snowden insisted that he did not reveal any U.S.operations against military targets.
"I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous," he wrote. "These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target."
• He said he was initially "very encouraged" by the public response to the leaked information. "Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history."
• He said he did not release the NSA documents during the prior administration because then-candidate Barack Obama's campaign promises and election "gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes."
"Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge."
• He said Google, Facebook and other tech companies had been "misleading" in their denials of a giant government surveillance program called PRISM.
"They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation," he said. "If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?"
The British newspaper had asked readers to post their questions to Snowden and recommend their favorites.
The blog was monitored by reporter Glenn Greenwald, who broke the NSA story two weeks ago based on Snowden leaks.
Underscoring Snowden's delicate situation in taking on the NSA, the newspaper included what it called "an important caveat":

"(The) live chat is subject to Snowden's security concerns and also his access to a secure internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be patient."​