Posted on 12/21/2012 12:30:02 PM PST by bgill
the teen’s mother confirmed that George had bought a Santa costume, and that he had told police that he and his friends planned to dress up as Santa and his elves–and hand out candy canes. He had even alerted a teacher to his idea. Police investigated and found no cause for concern. But Crawford High School principal Mike Campbell was not convinced, saying he found the post disturbing. He had George suspended while the school investigates.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
He needed to dress as Mohammed and hand out slaves, camels, and taqiyya.
Paranoia will destroy ya.
At least it might destroy this kid.
If the kid’s parents were in on the planning of this stunt they might have had their kid run it by the Principal.
The teacher that was informed of the idea should have taken it to the principal.
These days you can’t blame a principal for being overly cautious. But I think the suspension is a little over the top.
Why couldn’t he just contact the kid and say No Deal.
Reading the article I get the impression that it is not the Santa Claus and candy canes that bothered him but the way the kid posted the ‘Surprise’ comment.
I think he found that threatening.
FTA:
The Georgia Crawford County High School sophomore John George III had planned to come to school dressed as Santa. He posted on his Facebook page “Students of cchs ur in for a big surprise tomorrow .” But someone who saw the post found it threatening–and called the police.
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That facebook posting was the key that started this freak-out.
The high school kids, and teachers, here might not dress in full Santa costumes in class but there’s always goofy Christmas hats and reindeer antlers and elf stockings. And lots of candy. There’s always some band member, usually in the brass section, who will do the whole Santa thing at the Christmas Concert. Yes, it’s the CHRISTMAS Concert and the two week break is the CHRISTMAS break. The school offices and classrooms have Christmas trees and decorations everywhere. Jesus hasn’t been banned. Maybe it’s because this is Texas, but we let our students have good clean fun.
It might have mistakenly started it but the principal continuted to blow it out of proportion even after the police left. If anyone needed suspended it is the principal.
Sounds like Mr. Big Strong Principal Man was the only one not in on it from the start, and that’s why he’s pi$$ed.
maybe he got a lump of coal?
He would have buried it. Can’t burn it and create greenhouse gasses, can he?
If the kid had said he was coming to school as Obama, and passing out free stuff, the principal would’ve rolled out the red carpet.
should have passed out condoms
One morning a teacher gave my daughter’s advanced psychology class post-it notes, and asked what crime the would commit if there were no consequences. Most said they would rob a bank, a few suggested other more violent things, or trivial violations of school rules. My daughter wrote “mass murder”. The teacher read all the post-it notes out loud to the class, including my daughters. She asked who wrote it, my daughter said it was her, and the teacher decided it was fine.
But a student told their parents, and the parent called the school, and my daughter was suspended and went through a threat assessment which included a police officer asking her friends questions, collecting old assignments, and came to my house for an interview (which I attended and supervised).
At every step, everybody involved knew the whole exercise was absurd. The officer told me he had only done one of these in all the years they had this policy that scared him, and in that one the father of the kid had pro-nazi material on the walls of his house.
They eventually charged her with “improper behavior”, but I was able to appeal and eventually got the whole thing wiped from her record.
My son meanwhile learned that any time he wanted to get out of school for a day or two, he just had to say he felt like he might harm himself, and the “suicide” policy kicked in. Interestingly, if he went to the school counselor and asked to talk through some feelings, and any of that conversation included an interest in harming himself, he would get thrown out of school as well. The “suicide policy” essentially was “if you are going to kill yourself, do it somewhere else”. You needed to get a note from a professional that you were no danger to yourself.
We ended up keeping a therapist on retainer essentially, because even if you had a note saying it was fine, if the next day the kid says the wrong thing, it starts all over. Some kids had to wait a week or more to get an appointment with a therapist — so you can imagine that the therapy profession loves this policy.
I write opinion columns, but I don’t write about stuff like this, because it would be too easy for a school to take revenge on my kids for what I write.
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