The below article may raise some hackles on both sides of the issue it
discusses but it is sad that you have to find out what your school
policies are by reading them in the news.  This points up the fact that
we need to push really hard for our schools policy documentation to be
not only clear but accessible.  Are yours?
Zero tolerance takes toll on pupils
The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com

Zero tolerance takes toll on pupils
Valerie Richardson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Published 5/13/2002

     CENTENNIAL, Colo. - When Nepata Godec received a call from Dry
Creek Elementary School last month telling her that her son and his
friends were being
sent home from school, she prepared herself for the worst.
     "I thought somebody was in the hospital or something," said Mrs.
Godec.
     But she was even more shocked when she discovered the real reason.
It turned out 10-year-old Aaron Godec and six other fourth-grade boys
were being
suspended for the rest of the day for pointing their fingers like guns
during a game of army-and-aliens on the playground.
     "So I thought, 'Yes? Then what? Did somebody fall or poke somebody
in the eye?'" she said. "But that was it, and we needed to come to
school to pick
up our son. I couldn't believe it."
     That wasn't all. As the stunned parents later discovered, the
principal, Darci Mickle, also quizzed the boys on whether their families
owned guns.
     For 10-year-old Connor Andrew, whose father formerly worked as a
licensed hunting guide, the question placed him in an impossible
position. He had
been warned not to discuss his father's firearms in front of other
children lest they become curious and ask to see them.
     Torn between obeying his parents and obeying the principal, he
chose his parents. "I asked Connor about it, and he started to cry, and
he told me he
lied to Mrs. Mickle and answered 'no,'" said his father, Charles Andrew.
     "He was afraid he would get in more trouble, and that [the family]
would get in trouble," Mr. Andrew said.
     Because Dry Creek is located about 20 miles from Columbine High
School in the south Denver suburbs, it would be easy to dismiss what
happened March
25 as an isolated incident, an extreme but understandable reaction from
a community with reason to be paranoid. Easy, but wrong, because
Colorado isn't
alone.
     That day, the Dry Creek seven joined a growing fraternity of
students across the nation who have learned the hard way about "zero
tolerance." A popular
stance for schools grappling with the specter of school shootings, drugs
and alcohol abuse, the strict no-second-chances policy has resulted in
maximum
punishment, including detention, suspension, expulsion and even arrest,
for what was once viewed as normal horseplay.
     School officials defend zero tolerance as an unfortunate but
necessary reaction to increased demands for school safety. The
decade-old policy generally
goes hand in hand with anti-bullying programs that have become
widespread across the country since the April 20, 1999, shooting at
Columbine, which left
15 persons dead.
     At the Cherry Creek School District here, school officials insist
the Dry Creek incident was handled properly. They maintain that the
punishment was
not a "suspension," although some of the parents say that is what the
principal first told them.
     "School safety is the Cherry Creek School District's first concern
and the primary concern of parents who entrust their children to our
care every
day," said district spokeswoman Tustin Amole. "Our handling of this
incident is well within the boundaries of district policy and common
sense."

     Who's bullying whom?
     But critics argue that the harsh policies have had the unintended
consequence of traumatizing children for what is still widely viewed as
acceptable
behavior. They also ask whether zero tolerance actually makes schools
any safer.
     "This is just more bullying, but it's worse because it's bullying
by the school administration," said Dave Kopel, research director for
the Independence
Institute, a libertarian think tank in Golden, Colo. "It's absurd, and
it's an example of the reactions to Columbine, where something terrible
happened
and you want to do something. Unfortunately, in this case, you're doing
something by hurting innocent people."
     The issue has become one of the few on which libertarians and
liberals find themselves in agreement. In a June 2000 report, the
Harvard Civil Rights
Project criticized zero-tolerance policies as "needlessly harsh" at best
and barriers to minority education at worst.
     "Obviously teachers and administrators need to retain the authority
to remove students who endanger the safety of themselves and others,"
said the
report. "However, needlessly harsh measures are being taken against
students who pose no threat whatsoever to the school or to others - all
under the guise
of Zero Tolerance. A 'one size fits all' approach is inappropriate and
is causing great harm to many students who deserve more compassion and a
'second
chance.'"
     The American Bar Association has also weighed in against zero
tolerance, recommending in a February 2001 report that school districts
adopt more flexible
disciplinary policies.
     "Unfortunately, most current policies eliminate the common sense
that comes with discretion and - at great cost to society and to
children and families
- do little to improve school safety," said Ralph C. Martin II, chairman
of the ABA Criminal Justice Committee.
     Even gun-control advocates aren't sold on the policy. John Head,
founder of SAFE/Colorado, said the Dry Creek finger episode sounded
harmless enough
to him.
     "It sounds to me like innocent child's play," Mr. Head said. "I'm
not sympathetic to disciplining for that kind of play. What I have a
problem with
is when children have guns and point them at each other."
     Other examples of what critics see as zero tolerance run amok
include:
     .March 15, 2000: Four kindergarten students playing
cops-and-robbers in Sayreville, N.J., are given three-day suspensions.
     .Feb. 2, 2001: An 8-year-old boy in Jonesboro, Ark., is suspended
for three days after pointing a chicken finger at a teacher and saying,
"Pow, pow,
pow." Jonesboro was the site of a 1998 school shooting that left two
dead.
     .March 23, 2001: Two second-graders playing cops-and-robbers in New
Jersey are charged with making terrorist threats.
     The incidents have become so widespread that they are now
chronicled on several Web sites - including overlawyered.com,
ztnightmares.com, and thisistrue.com.
But zero-tolerance proponents argue that such episodes are anomalous and
misleading.
     Ken Lane, Colorado deputy attorney general, says the occasional
overreaction to student mischief is outweighed by the benefits of
keeping schools safer.
     "You hear these horror stories from time to time, but you have to
remember that zero-tolerance policies didn't develop out of thin air,"
Mr. Lane said.
"The schools are dealing with some serious situations here."
     Because school districts are required to protect the privacy of
their students, he said, they cannot always reveal everything they know
about each
disciplinary action.
     "Sometimes what's reported isn't the whole story," Mr. Lane said.
"You have to respect the school districts and allow them to respond
based on what
they know of the situation."

     'That would mean tolerance'
     According to parents, the seven boys at Dry Creek were playing a
game in which some were soldiers and some were aliens. They pointed
fingers at each
other to simulate guns but stayed in a remote part of the playground
away from other children.
     When a playground monitor found what they were doing, she called
them to the patio, then marched them to the principal's office. The boys
said they
didn't realize that they had done anything wrong until the principal
told them.
     Mrs. Mickle said she asked the boys if they understood that what
they did was against the rules, and she said they admitted that they
did. She pointed
to the district's conduct code, which parents and students must read and
sign at the beginning of the school year.
     The Student Policy and Discipline Handbook defines "violent and
aggressive behavior" as "threats directed, either orally (including by
telephone),
by non-verbal gesture, or in writing, at an individual, his or her
family or a group." Under "intimidation/bullying," the code includes
"any written or
verbal expression, physical act or gesture, or a pattern thereof, that
is intended to cause distress upon one or more students."
     Even without the school policy, zero tolerance is the law in
Colorado, considered at the forefront of the movement. Colorado law
mandates expulsion
for students who "carry, bring, use or possess a firearm or firearm
facsimile at school."
     Nowhere does the law mention fingers, but Mrs. Mickle said the
conduct code gives administrators the latitude to deal with problems as
they arise.
"It's definitely not spelled out in the district discipline policy
because we can't predict what every student is going to do," she said.
"That's what
we're here for: to interpret those details."
     In other words, one principal's harmless gesture can be another
principal's violent act. To clear up any confusion, the fourth-grade
teachers went
back a few weeks later and told their students in no uncertain terms
that finger guns were forbidden.
     By that time, word of the incident had already spread throughout
the school. "The teacher was telling the kids about the policy, and
Aaron said that
everyone in the classroom was looking at him," Mrs. Godec said.
     Given that the finger-gun ban was never explicitly stated in the
rules, what parents really want to know is: Why not first give the boys
a warning?
Parents say none of the seven boys was a chronic troublemaker, and most
had never seen the business end of the principal's office before.
     "I told [Mrs. Mickle], 'That's not right. They should have been
given a warning first,'" said Kristine Kinney, mother of Jorge Marquez,
one of the
seven boys. "If she had told any one of those boys - if she had said,
'That's not proper behavior' - I guarantee you they all would have said,
'OK.'"
     But that's why they call it zero tolerance. "'No tolerance' means
more than just a warning, because that would mean tolerance," Mrs.
Mickle said.
     To some parents, such rationales sound like zero judgment, not to
mention a breach of due process. "They weren't throwing pine cones, they
weren't
playing with sticks; they were off by themselves not bothering anyone,"
Mr. Andrew said. "It just burns me up. I just don't think you treat kids
that way."
     Mr. Andrew was also angry over what he saw as the principal's
chutzpah in asking the students about private family matters such as gun
ownership. "It's
none of her business," he said. "If she wants to know that, she needs to
ask me, not Connor."
     But the district is standing behind the principal. "The district
must know whether a student has the means to carry out a threat of
violence to help
us determine the level of the threat of violence against other students
or staff," said Ms. Amole, the spokeswoman.
     Mr. Head backed the district on that decision, saying that society
has a legitimate interest in knowing where the guns are. "I know that
doctors are
doing it, and increasingly parents are doing it - asking if there are
guns stored in the home before letting their child play at someone's
house," he said.
     For teachers or principals to ask such questions, however, amounts
to invading a family's privacy by targeting its most vulnerable members,
say critics.
"Clearly that's outrageous," Mr. Kopel said.
     "That's like asking what political party your parents belong to, or
how they voted, or whether they've ever had an abortion," he said. "It's
none of
the schools' business how parents exercise their constitutional rights.
The first thing I'd say is, that's extremely bad judgment. The second
thing is,
that principal should be fired."

     Safety first?
     Of course, if zero-tolerance policies worked, that might be the end
of the argument. As critics point out, however, there's little evidence
to show
that they actually make schools any safer. Indeed, a 1997 study by the
National Center for Education Statistics found that even after four
years, schools
with zero-tolerance policies had more incidents of violence than those
without.
     Zero tolerance's defenders argue that schools with significant
violence problems are more likely to enact such extreme measures in the
first place.
But critics argue that the policy better start showing results or risk
losing its legitimacy with the public.
     "Zero-tolerance strategies have begun to turn schools into
supplemental law-enforcement agencies but demonstrate little return,
despite a decade of
hype," said Russ Skiba, director of the Institute for Child Study at
Indiana University in Bloomington and Reece Peterson, vice president of
the National
Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders.
     In an April 2000 article for Education Digest, "Zap Zero
Tolerance," the two concluded that the policies were more effective at
providing cover for
school administrators than students.
     "In the face of an apparent inability to influence violence in
schools, harsh measures are intended to send a message that the
administration is still
in charge," they said. "Whether it is effectively received or actually
changes student behavior may be less important than the reassurance that
sending
it provides to administrators, teachers and parents."
     Chris Dunmall, whose son Travis was one of the boys suspended in
the Dry Creek case, called the action so much window-dressing. "It makes
the administration
safer - from legal action in the future," he said. "It doesn't make the
school any safer."

     Dreading school
     Harder to measure is the effect on students caught up in the
no-tolerance climate. For Travis Dunmall, said his father, the
experience has made him
more cynical.
     "He's learned that there are some really small people out there who
actually get in power sometimes," Mr. Dunmall said. "He's learned to
question authority,
which is probably not a bad lesson."
     Other boys took the punishment harder. As they waited to leave
school, one of the boys began crying for fear of his parents' reaction.
A couple of
the boys wondered aloud whether they would be arrested.
     When Aaron arrived home that afternoon with his father, Mrs. Godec
said he looked "discombobulated."
     "I looked at him, and he had been trying to be brave for his dad,
but when he saw me his bottom lip was quivering," she said. "So I just
held him.
He kept saying, 'Mom, I don't know, I don't understand. I'm bad, but I
don't know why.'"
     "After that, he dreaded going to school, and my son loves school,"
she said.
     Upon their return to Dry Creek after spring break, the seven were
given a week of lunchtime detention, during which they had to sit in the
school foyer
or hall during recess. That week, Aaron came down with a series of
headaches, something that had never happened before, said his mother.
     "He's not inclined to get into trouble - he's never been to the
principal's office before - and he was freaked out," she said.
     Because they were seated in public, she said, the detention turned
into a week of public humiliation. Other children laughed and made jokes
as they
passed them on the way from the cafeteria to the playground, said
parents.
     "They were sitting in the foyer and they were supposed to read,"
Mrs. Godec said. "But Aaron told me, 'Every time somebody would pass by,
Mom, I just
put my book up over my face and hoped they wouldn't recognize my
shoes.'"
     His friend Connor was plagued that week by stomach aches. His
mother tried to ease the punishment by taking him out to lunch one day,
"but that was
a mistake, because then he didn't want to go back to school," Mr. Andrew
said.
     "It was an embarrassment," Mr. Andrew said. "To set those kids up
for peer persecution, that's not right, either."
     Even as the backlash against zero tolerance builds, however,
parents say they don't expect the public schools to ease up any time
soon. Even with expert
opinion and public outrage on their side, all it takes is the specter of
one teen-age gunman to send the schools back to zero tolerance.
     "I told her [the principal], 'I know you're trying to prevent a
Columbine situation, I know you're trying to create a peaceful
environment, but it's
almost like you want them to walk around like robots,'" said Mrs. Godec.
"And she kept saying over and over, 'We have a zero-tolerance policy,
and we won't
deal with anything.'"
     "It's not going to change," said Mrs. Godec, "and it's just going
to get worse."
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