Posted on 12/15/2009 3:46:27 PM PST by Darkwolf377
Mayor: School boss should apologize to boy who drew cross By Laura Crimaldi and Laurel J. Sweet | Tuesday, December 15, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
Photo by Taunton Gazette Taunton Mayor Charles Crowley called School Superintendent Julie Hackett from his vacation today and asked her to apologize both privately and publicly to the family of an 8-year-old special needs student sent home from school and ordered to undergo psychological testing after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross.
Mayor Crowleys sentiments were that he would hope Dr. Hackett would meet with the family today, apologize, make a public apology on behalf of the school department, pay for the psychiatrist and come up with a policy to make sure this never happens in our school system again, said Crowleys assistant Todd Castro.
Castro said this evening he is unaware of any response from Hackett. Hackett has not responded to repeated requests for comment from the Herald.
The Lowell M. Maxham Elementary School second-grader was booted from the school on Dec. 2 when school officials feared his artwork - drawn to depict what he did on his Thanksgiving break - might be exposing violent tendencies. The child was allowed to return on Dec. 7 after a two-day risk assessment by psychiatrist Helene Titelbaum determined there was nothing wrong with him.
(The boy) does not appear to be a threat to himself or others at this time. Therefore, I recommend that he return to school as soon as possible, Titelbaum concluded in her report, a copy of which was obtained by the Herald.
The boys father, Chester Johnson, 40, a part-time maintenance worker for the Taunton School Department, told the Herald his son drew Jesus after visiting the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attelboro to see its Christmas display. He then put his own name on the cross instead of Jesus.
Toni Saunders, an educational consultant with the non-profit Associated Advocacy Center in Sandwich, who was asked to help the family by their pastor, said, I heard the story and I was appalled, to put it mildly.
My intention is to shed light on what is happening to children in schools because of zero tolerance, she said. Im sure they expected Santa Claus or a reindeer, but thats not where this childs mind was.
Johnson, she said, just wants to get his son out of the school. His son is really traumatized from this event.
This is one of those How is this possible? scenarios, she said. We live in a society where were supposed to honor children and their imagination.
In June 2008, a Taunton fifth-grade student was suspended for a day for a stick figure drawing that appeared to depict him shooting his teacher and a classmate.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1219085
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Didn’t see this posted, if it has been posted, please ask to have it pulled.
Appalling.
Our schools are run by morons.
Apologize?
FIRE THIS BITCH
The parents are choosing to keep that child in school, from what I gather.
Not me man. My kid would be out of there in a New York Minute. No way would they peg my kid as a psych patient for drawing a picture at eight years old.
And BTW, did he explain why he put his name on the cross?
There are moments when the idiotic actions of allegedly "educated" people in government are simply beyond belief.
This is one of them.
Whatever passes for School Superintendent Julie Hackett's "brain" is little more than sewage. She should be kicked to the curb . . . . . then just kicked for being so demonstrably stupid!!!
Funny how liberals react like Dracula to garlic when exposed to Jesus Christ, yet see no evil at all with Islam.
I'll never understand...
FIRE HER.
They are rebelling against God, and they know Him to be true. They are in denial.
I'm willing to bet the psychologist will not be so quick to send HER back to school. This woman has some serious judgmental problems, at best. There may be racial, sexist, or religious motivations for her actions. Perhaps she likes to harm children. This should investigated thoroughly!
Beyond that, she deserves to be subjected to the same scrutiny as the boy, so that she understands what her victims are going through.
Damn ... this 'special needs' kid has a theology that is awfully deep...
First putting up a Cross for Christmas - understanding that the reason Jesus (God manifest in the flesh) came into the world was to save sinners - ultimately dying for us on the Cross. God's ultimate Gift. Most people forget that when they think of Christmas. And then understanding that Jesus became sin for us, and we became the righteousness of Jesus by HIS works...So putting his name on the Cross wasn't 'entirely' in error (albeit - putting his name on the Risen LORD would have been more appropriate. Jesus bore all our sins on the Cross, and HE alone paid the penalty for all of us -- but still, the kid wasn't really far off...).
The school way over reacted, but I think there was cause for some concern, or at least the parents needed to be made aware: “He then put his own name on the cross instead of Jesus. “
Oh, I see: If youre a Christian, you need Psychological testing. Got it.
I guess she has missed the decades of liberal/progressive/communist PC indoctrination and intimidation going on PRIMARILY in the public school system.
Fire her? How about throwing her into federal prison for violation of freedom of religion, Freedom of expression, and creating a hostile educational environment.
I believe they are moving him to a different school.
Perhaps he was just writing his name on his picture. We don’t know what his special needs are. Perhaps he is developmentally delayed.
You have to be kidding. A Christian child identifying with Christ's suffering on the cross in a drawing sounds rather normal and healthy to me. All I see is that he knows the fundamentals of the story of Christ.
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