Back in July, my colleague Lawrence Hardy wrote a list of “five reforms that failed.” Not surprisingly, “Zero Tolerance” policies were ranked. Larry’s example was a Delaware high school student who got suspended for bringing a pastry knife to school for a Junior Achievement project.
It certainly wasn’t the first time zero tolerance got lambasted, but apparently some schools in Delaware still didn’t get the message.
This week, a 6-year-old boy named Zachary Christie is the poster child for zero tolerance gone amuck. He’s a Cub Scout who loves school so much that he sometimes wears a suit. And on Sept. 29, he was so excited about a new tool his parents gave hima jackknife-type tool that has a knife, fork and spoon for campingthat he brought it to school to use for lunch.
And that’s where the trouble started. Under the Christina, Del., school district code, knives are banned. Zachary was sentenced to 45 days in a school for juvenile delinquents, and his parents, who are home-schooling him in the interim, created a website and are making the rounds on national news to tell their son’s plight.
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Last year, state lawmakers tried to fix a state law to give school boards and administrators more flexibility in cases such as this, according to the New York Times.
What spurred the legislature to act was an equally absurd case: a third-grader’s grandmother sent a birthday cake to school with a knife to cut it, and–after cutting the cake with the knife–the teacher called the principal. The legislature gave school boards authority to modify expulsions, but now is looking to revise that law to include suspensions.
Of course, it’s never as simple as one incident relays. The Times interviews researchers who note that zero tolerance became popular in the 1990s in response to spurts of school violence, and many administrators were accused of racial and other biases in disciplining those at fault. Of course, zero tolerance also sent many students with sinister motives to the streets to create more violent episodes rather than addressing the underlying problems.
So what kind of message does it send to Zachary, his peers, and parents across the country when a first-grader is barred from his school because of a simple mistake?
If school boards, principals and teachers are given some leewaywhich they should bethey must use common sense to avert situations like these. In this case, the teacher or principal could have nicely explained to Zachary and his parents why knives have to be banned and gotten assurance that it wouldn’t happen again.
Instead, the Christies feel desperate and now are rallying supporters to come to a school board meeting tonight in hopes that Zachary’s punishment will be overturned and he can return to his school.
“We didn’t want our son becoming the poster child for this,” Zachary’s mother told the Times, “but this is out of control.”
Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor
