Posted on 09/29/2013 3:10:32 AM PDT by markomalley
Yet another student has landed in trouble for having something that represents a gun, but isn’t actually anything like a real gun.
This time, the student is 12-year-old Joseph Lyssikatos, a student in advanced math who had perfect attendance last year. The seventh-grader made the mistake of bringing a ridiculously small, silver keychain shaped like a gun to Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School in Coventry, R.I, reports local NBC affiliate WJAR.
The two-inch keychain fell out of Lyssikatos’s backpack while he was at school.
After another kid picked it up and displayed it to other students, a teacher intervened and impounded the keychain.
Apparently fearing that the roughly quarter-sized hunk of cheap metal was somehow a danger to life and limb, school officials sprang into action. They suspended Lyssikatos for three days. He has also been banned from an upcoming class field trip.
The boy’s parents aren’t pleased.
“This boy was the one waving it or showing it to other kids. Not Joseph,” Bonnie Bonanno, Joseph’s stepmother, told WJAR. “Joseph wasn’t doing that so why weren’t both of them reprimanded?”
Lyssikatos noted that he got the tiny keychain at a local arcade with go-karts and such in exchange for 25 tickets.
School officials have clammed up concerning the incident, according to WJAR. The school released a brief statement saying: “Because this is a student discipline issue, we cannot comment on any specifics.”
Someone called a behavioral specialist at Feinstein Middle School informed the boy’s parents of the suspension. The parents say the principal and the school district superintendent won’t return phone calls.
The Feinstein Middle School handbook entitled “Serious Disciplinary Infractions” declares: “Possession/carrying/use of/threat of use of a firearm or replica shall result in a recommendation for expulsion for a period of time up to one full calendar year.”
The boy’s father, Keith Bonanno, claimed on WPRO radio that the behavioral specialist told him his son was “lucky that he didn’t get suspended for 10 days, or even worse expelled.”
According to the Feinstein Middle School website, the behavioral specialist at the school is Kim Sturdahl.
This incident marks at least the second episode during this newly-minted academic year involving school officials in the United States overreacting insanely to things that aren’t guns .
Also this week, two seventh graders were expelled from a public school in Virginia Beach, Va. for an entire school year for playing with an Airsoft toy gun on wholly private property. (RELATED: Awful: School expels kids who played with Airsoft gun on private property)
“This incident marks at least the second episode during this newly-minted academic year involving school officials in the United States overreacting insanely to things that aren’t guns “.
“School’s make the rules”. Embolden with the crown of athourity allows them to set what ever rediculous rule they choose and having focused on the removal of ANYTHING related to guns be it replicas, photos or even verbal discusions, they will jump at the first chance they get. Time for a reality check of the school boards, the school administration and the teachers who live in another world unknown to most of us. Better yet, pull your kids out of these communist indoctrination centers and home school.
I call it brainwashing of the innocent........
Policies are a great way to forego thinking and provide the policy enforcer with the wonderful excuse, “I was just following orders.”
Many times, they will back down when they get a real good FReepin’.
As long as the cockroaches think they can quietly get away with this kind of stuff, they will continue. When the light is shone on them, they tend to scatter.
“a teacher intervened and impounded the keychain.”
Brave teacher for intervening. The President will call this brave public servant to the White House, and bestow honors for selflessly risking their own life to save students.
Good thing the “gun” wasn’t the size of TWO quarters. Kid could have taken out the whole school.
The people making these decisions need to be fired. Nothing less is acceptable.
We won't. And the more of this stuff we hear, the more obvious it is that we're past the point of no return.
This is more than zero tolerance for guns in school. This is zero tolerance for the IDEA of a gun.
But in this specific area of interest I cannot blame school officials. This “one size fits all” mentality that has befallen school policy has been cause by some really bad and irresponsible “parents,” who refuse to allow school leaders to use judgment in dealing with behavior issues, and run into the principals office with a lawyer on their arm every time “Johnny” gets caught scribbling graffiti on the bathroom wall.
America is infested with parents who throw their kids in “daycare centers” as soon as the centers will take them, and when the kids are old enough to addict to TV, end up being babysat by whatever the media broadcasts. These parents know they're not doing what's best for their kids, and they're guilt-ridden over it. But, many of them are also narcissists...having been indoctrinated in public schools, themselves...so when their child gets in trouble at school and they feel that “johnny's failure's” may be a result of their bad parenting, they turn any incident into an opportunity to threaten and attack an administrator or principal for “unfairness.”
I've seen this garbage happen hundreds of times, and it's almost always the same. It's some guilt-ridden mother who, because she's put her own life and pleasures ahead of the best interest of her child, has been removed from their child's life to the point of hardly being able to remember his name. These are often “mothers” who either had “johnny” out of wedlock or are in their second, third, or fourth marriages.
This is not always the case with these ridiculous “my child is perfect!” mothers...but this little “mold” often fits, hand-in-glove.”
From the standpoint of the administrator or principal, coming under attack when you try to exercise judgment...often to prevent ridiculous over-action in cases like these...forces administrations to create “one-size-fits-all” policies, like “no tolerance” policies. I really think that in many cases school leadership would far prefer to allow seasoned and caring school leaders to use personal judgment in matters like these. But honestly, these ridiculous parents who absolutely refuse to allow administrators to see “gray area” in exercising authority and discipline force schools into this kind of rule-making.
It sickens me as it does you. But as I said, schools are to blame for a lot of “bovine excrement” with regard to dumbing-down kids, attacking societal norms, attacking faith and family, attacking academic standards...lot of things. But in these type discipline cases I'd suggest you look to bad parents as the cause of the problem. Because I can assure you that were you in the right “seat” to see what was going on behind the walls of these school administrators offices you quickly find out that “chitty parents” are the perpetrators of much of the most shocking and destructive behaviors that ever occur in a public school.
Here is my problem with the “no common sense” agenda in school......
When you have this sort of toy declared to be “dangerous”, you trivialize the meaning of the word “danger”. The kids are not stupid, and know that toy is not dangerous.
Now, let’s tell them how “dangerous” it is to take drugs or get into a car with a stranger, or put personal info on the internet. They will equate that “danger” with the “danger” of the “gun’, and we end up with dead or damaged kids.
I first noticed this trend about 10 years ago when there was a public service ad stating “what do you call someone who doesn’t recycle? Dangerous”. It infuriated me that they were teaching my grandkids that I was on the same level as a violent criminal.
With kids being suspended for drawing a weapon, I wonder when they will be suspended for carrying a Massachusetts quarter with a gun on it.
In in “Brave New World” babies were indoctrinated into certain career paths Alphas’ were encouraged to read and were at the top of the pecking order. Delta babies were shocked if they touched a book ... analogy? males are to be punished if they “do anything remotely male” ... these are sick people with power and an agenda.
Oh I dunno. Maybe it’s because all those endless pleas for increased millage on our property taxes keep going down to defeat?
Seems like absent fathers are the bigger problem in the examples you cite.
School administration is full of PCP
P ost
C olumbine
P aranoia
“Zero tolerence” = zero common sense...and a lack of discretion which would put the Soviet Gulag to shame.
what ever happened to parents going to the school and confronting the school admin!!!
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