IL: Zero Tolerence Policies; Teens Arrested for Food Fight

School Safety: 'Zero Tolerance' Policies Common Sense?

Chicago Students Arrested, Suspended for Food Fight; Oldest Is 15

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/education-school-safety-tolerance-polices-lack-common-sense/Story?id=9053934&page=2

Eighth-graders Cassandra and Aliyah Russell of Chicago never imagined they'd be arrested in their school cafeteria, much less for throwing food.

But that's just what happened following lunchtime mayhem last Thursday at the Perspectives Charter Middle School, south of Chicago. More than two dozen students, ages 11 to 15, were rounded up by police, arrested and charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct.

"They took us to jail, fingerprinted us, mugshotted us, or whatever, all because of a food fight...I was arrested. Handcuffs on," 13-year-old Cassandra told ABC News.

"We were suspended, went to jail and now have to go to court," said 14-year-old Aliyah.

The sisters' mother, Erica, told ABC News she's stunned.

"Who does that? Lock children up for throwing a carrot, a biscuit, milk, Jello," she said. "Who does that?"

The Russell sisters returned to school today after finishing a three-day suspension for their part in the food fight.

Watch the full report on "World News with Charles Gibson" tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET.

So, why weren't the students just given detention?

"The Chicago police officers who help protect our school, concerned about potential injuries resulting from the fight, felt it was necessary to arrest those responsible," the school said in a statement.

The high-performing Perspectives Charter Middle School sends 90 percent of its graduates to college. Its stated mission is to "provide students with a rigorous and relevant education, based on 'A Disciplined Life.'"

But with schools across the country on high alert for dangerous behavior, many parents are asking if their discipline policies – particularly the zero tolerance approach – may be going too far.

"You have police coming in and investigating and sometimes taking kids down to the police station – grade-school children – for what we used to call childish behavior," John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group, told ABC News.

"Zero tolerance" policies – widely adopted by schools across the country after the Columbine High School shootings in 1999 – were initially designed to keep weapons out of schools. Ten years later, the policies in many schools have expanded to include all sorts of disruptive behavior. Critics say treating major violations and minor infractions the same way defies common sense.

Over the past few years, several high-profile student discipline cases have raised complaints that schools are blurring the distinction between serious threats to school safety and cases of childish misbehavior.

In one case, a 6-year-old from Delaware was suspended for weapons possessionafter bringing his Cub Scout combo eating utensil to class, excited to try it out at lunch.

Administrators at a Pennsylvania middle school suspended an 11-year-old honor student who sketched stick figures of her teachers with arrows through their heads.

In Georgia, a high school senior was suspended and arrested after officials found a machete in the back of his truck in the school parking lot. He used the tool in his part-time landscaping business.

And a Virginia boy was suspended for dying his hair blue -- a color school administrators said was disruptive.

Advocates of zero tolerance say the policies are necessary -- the only way to hold students accountable and maintain strict safety standards.

For the Russells and dozens of other students from the Perspectives Charter Middle School food fight, zero tolerance now means a court date.

"It's wrong because it's a food fight," said 13-year-old Cassandra Russell."[But] I never thought I could be arrested for a food fight."

Said Erica Russell, "We're worrying about this being on their record...A food fight? I just can't get over that."

An Illinois state judge will decide later this month whether the charges should be dismissed or upheld with a penalty of probation or community service. State law keeps juveniles' criminal records sealed until the students turn 17, and after that, their records will be wiped clean.

Fiji: Corporal punishment is banned, Bole reminds teachers

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=114609

Update: 12:12PM THE Ministry of Education has reiterated its zero tolerance policy on corporal punishment in schools.

Interim Education Minister Filipe Bole said corporal punishment was banned in all Fiji schools by a High Court ruling in March 2002.

He made the comment in reaction to the recent cases of teachers accused of meting out corporal punishment to students.

The ministry wishes to remind all teachers and educators in schools that the use of corporal punishment, for whatever reason, would directly contravene this court ruling and could lead to teachers facing legal challenges, Mr Bole said in a statement issued today.

He said the ministry had guidelines in place to assist schools and teachers deal with disciplinary cases.

These guidelines form the ministrys Behaviour Management Plan for schools and include parental involvement, student counselling, rehabilitation at home, disciplinary committees and even suspension, he said.

MA: Grandma makes a plea for bullied autistic boy

By Joe Fitzgerald
Boston Herald Columnist
Monday, November 24, 2008

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1134420&srvc=home&position=emailed

The pain in her voice-mail message was palpable.

“My grandson has a name,” she said. “It’s Martin. He’s 5 years old. He likes baseball, loves to draw and is a whiz with the computer. He’s a happy little kid, except on the bus where he’s bullied because he is different. It’s been horrible. Would you please call me back?”

Her name is Catherine. Martin was the first of her three grandchildren and lives with her and his mother in Roxbury.

“When he was 2,” Catherine recalled, “we began to notice different things. Then one day we heard a nurse say, ‘It looks like he might have autism.’

“Because he was my first grandchild, we had that bond. Finding out he had autism only made that bond stronger. As I told my daughter, we’ll be advocating for him all of his life because there’ll be situations he won’t be able to handle.”

The situation now confronting Martin involves other passengers on the school bus he boards every morning en route to his kindergarten class.

“The teasing and tormenting started in September,” Catherine said. “Because he doesn’t speak, or makes sounds when speaking to imaginary friends, they imitate him and make fun of him.

“When I brought this to the attention of the principal in September, I was told the school had a policy of zero tolerance, yet nothing was done.

“Then one day he came home with scratches all over his shoulder. I took pictures, and sent them to the principal with a note. The answer we got was that Martin sometimes plays with bigger kids and ‘maybe he was wrestling with them.’ But when he got off the bus that afternoon I could see he was trying to adjust his coat and shirt as if something had just happened.”

Last week was the final straw. “Two girls, fourth- and fifth-graders, pulled off his hat, threw it to the back of the bus, and hit him on the head,” Catherine said. “The principal told my daughter that unless the driver files a report, she must assume it never happened.

“Then the assistant principal told her if she wasn’t happy with the bus service, she could always call a lawyer.

“I said, ‘No, we are going to call the Herald.’

“And that’s why I called you. Enough is enough.

“We aren’t looking for trouble, but I want them to know how serious we are. So let’s see if this helps. If it doesn’t, I’ll be calling you again and this time I’ll be naming names.”

Florida - Complaint filed against PBC Schools — neglect, harsh discipline of special education students — lead to juvenile justice system

by K. Chandler
Westside Gazette 10/8/2008
http://www.thewestsidegazette.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=91745&sID=4&ItemSource=L

Nearly four years after the Advancement Project’s landmark study, Education on Lockdown: the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track, demonstrated how ‘zero tolerance’ policies within the Palm Beach County School District (PBCSD)— originally designed to address serious behavioral issues — morphed into a “take no prisoners” approach to school discipline, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), along with a consortium of civil rights organizations, have now filed formal complaints against the Hillsborough and PBCSD asserting that students with special needs are being subjected to neglect as well as unnecessarily harsh discipline that essentially put them on a track from the schoolhouse to the jailhouse.

The complaint, raised by the NAACP, Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, Fla. Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities and the Southern Legal Counsel was lodged with the Florida Department of Education, Oct. 1, 2008 on behalf of four special education students who’d faced frequent and harsh discipline. The complaint cites a woeful lack of psychological counseling, and other social services mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education and Improvement Act (IDEA), the end result being that the students were frequently removed from class to the detriment of their education.

“This is a systemic problem that really needs to be addressed at the highest levels of the school district,” said Barbara Burch Briggs, staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society.

Studies have consistently shown that by far Black males are the ones being disproportionately targeted and tracked into the juvenile justice system for relatively minor incidences that should have been dealt with by the school system. Between 2006 and 2007, Black males made up a third of the state’s 23,000 criminal justice referrals despite comprising slightly over 20 percent of Florida’s aggregate student population. Roughly 70 percent of all youth referred to the juvenile justice system have mental health issues, the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) estimates.

“These school districts are violating the civil rights of their most vulnerable students — those with disabilities,” stated David Utter, director of the SPLC’s Florida Initiatives. “Rather than providing these students with the educational services they need and are entitled to under federal law, they are pushing them out of school.”

Compounding the situation, many elementary students enrolled in the PBCSD with behavioral and emotional issues, despite having an average IQ, were found to lag far behind their academic grade level when they advanced to middle school. Making matters worse, only a third of students with disabilities attending Palm Beach County schools graduated compared to nearly two-thirds of students in general. Moreover, the dropout rate is 13 percent for emotionally disabled students compared to 4 percent overall, according to statistics compiled between 2005 & 2006.

The complaint filed by the consortium also comes on the heels of a national report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released in September, entitled: A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools that noted, among other things, that African Americans were punished 1.4 times more than white students even though their alleged transgressions were not disproportionately higher, and “special education students — students with mental or physical disabilities — also receive corporal punishment at disproportionate rates.”

The report coincides with a newly-proposed State Board of Education rule, that if enacted, would permit even greater use of force in schools by administrators and teachers – something many parents and child advocates reject out of hand as only making matters worse, particularly with respect to special needs students who are already bearing an unfair burden of harsh discipline and neglect.

“Over-inclusion and under-inclusion each have race implications, as do zero-tolerance practices that lead to racially disparate suspensions and expulsions – and involvement in the juvenile justice system for Black and Latino students with disabilities,” stated Florida State Conference NAACP President, Adora Nweze, who was formerly involved in special education. “Children of color were already being ground down by this flawed system in Palm Beach County schools. Now it appears the entire system has collapsed on top of them.”