If only the kid had joined the "Choom Gang" instead.
Posted on 06/13/2013 5:05:50 AM PDT by servo1969
This week brought more bad news for Joshua Welch, the Baltimore-area second-grader who was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a breakfast pastry into something resembling a gun.
School officials have denied an appeal to have the suspension expunged from the boy’s permanent record, reports The Baltimore Sun.
Robin Ficker, the attorney representing Welch and his family, said he will now take the matter to the Anne Arundel County school board. Under local regulations, he has 30 days to do so.
“If this school can’t educate a seven-year-old without putting him out of school, how are they going to deal with 17-year-olds?” Ficker said, according to The Sun.
Welch, who is now eight, was suspended from Park Elementary School for two days in March after he allegedly sculpted the pastry into something that maybe looked like a gun.
At the time, Welch told Baltimore FOX affiliate WBFF that his goal was to turn the prefabricated delicacy into a mountain, but that didn’t really materialize.
“It was already a rectangle. I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top of it and kind of looked like a gun,” he said.
“But it wasn’t,” the boy astutely added.
In May, Ficker met with school officials in a failed attempt to have the suspension removed from Welch’s record.
On Monday, Ficker received a letter officially denying the request. The letter came from an unnamed school district official acting as an agent of Superintendent Kevin Maxwell.
The district’s reasoning is unclear. Bob Mosier, a spokesman for Anne Arundel County schools, had no comment for The Sun.
While it seems like Joshua Welch’s spring has been pretty awful, there has been a glimmer of good news. Two months after Welch was suspended, the National Rifle Association granted him a free lifetime membership (which is worth around $550). (RELATED: Boy suspended for ‘Pop-Tart Pistol’ receives NRA lifetime membership)
Also, Sen. J. B. Jennings, a Republican who represents Baltimore Harford Counties, introduced “The Reasonable School Discipline Act of 2013.” The bill, which apparently went nowhere, was designed to curb the zeal of public school officials who are tempted to suspend students for having things — or eating things — that represent guns, but aren’t actually anything like real guns.
“I’m sorry kid but that incident back in grade school with the pop tart ...we can’t hire you to work for the Department of Homeland Security because of it. It’s just too much of a risk”
A message from a resident of the communist state of Maryland :
HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the local hardware store was selling bbq butane lighters that were shaped like scoped bolt action rifles. I bought a couple and the next time I was in there he told me that he was told they were illegal because toys should have orange tips and kids could conceivably use these as toy guns....
think I will buy out the rest of his stock.
If I were that boys parent, I’d sue the school hard. Then I’d pull him out of that school and home school him.
This zero tolerance crap is going way too far.
Imagine this, "principal aardvark suspended a young child from school for eating a pancake into the shape of a gun, or at least it seemed that way to aardvark"
“Do not fear their fear [what they fear]”
Let them. I envision that it will be to the ridicule and shame, not of the lad with the mountainous pop tart that might look like a gun too, but of the system that did it.
It’s education for the future. Teaching kids how to function in a police state.
Wear it like a badge of honor. And make sure your parents stick the taxpayers of that school district with multi million dollar court judgement as a reward for them standing back and doing nothing to stop this stupidity in its tracks. That school board and administration are dangerous animals and if the people paying their salaries won’t keep said animal on a leash then they get to pay up for the damage it does.
When I explained what had happen about a half a dozen kids said, "sure glad they didn't see me when I did the same thing when I was in primary school.
If only the kid had joined the "Choom Gang" instead.
It should be a badge of honor. In 15-20 years, he can proudly say: "Yeah, I was the 7 year-old kid who was persecuted by those asinine, vindictive, reactionary school ''officials.""
I think it is high time we pursue Gun Education instead of scaring our children for life psychologically. We live in a country that allows us to “keep and bear arms.” Let’s teach to a level that keeps our kids safe, instead of making a Constitutional Right something to be afraid of or worse as demonstrated by this loony result.
Oh...and in case you didn’t catch what I just said, let me repeat what they are doing to our children about our Constitutional Rights....
...instead of making a Constitutional Right something to be afraid of...
Time to flip the script and make “being harassed by public school authorities over non-guns” a positive. A feature, not a bug.
The parents are “fighting back” but they are still fools if if they keep their child in public school. Even it they get the terrible black mark “expunged” it will never go away, will be available for college use, and more such entries are being made in his records about his troublemaking parents. You cannot win in this sort of fight unless you can collect a a big enough bunch of damages to be able to afford to get the hell out of the state and keep the child henceforth OUT of public school anywhere.
And the jackasses on Capitol Hump think that the immigration system is “broken”. Geesh. Our public schools are a mess. A bunch of clueless morons.
It’s Baltimore——Pelosi’s Hometown. they elected Elijah Cummings.
O’Malley was Mayor there.
The guards in the jail provided dope and sex to the inmates.
Come on—does anyone really expect any common sense coming from there?
A 7 year old gets suspended and a permanent mark on his record for having a gun shaped pop tart, but a 13 YO will be able to get plan B without anyone batting an eye.
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