Christina School Board Reverses Decision
I doubt anyone is surprised by this decision:
A Newark, Del., first-grader suspended for bringing a camping utensil to school has gotten a reprieve.
Six-year-old Zachary Christie, who attends John R. Downes Elementary School, was ordered to spend 45 days in an alternative school for troublemakers because he wanted to eat pudding during lunch with his favorite camping tool. It’s a combination of folding fork, knife, and spoon.
The Christiana [sic] School District’s board made a hasty change to its strict code of conduct Tuesday night.
The Christina School District received thousands of calls about this case. I just hope that the hasty changes to the policy are good changes and not just a knee-jerk reaction.
Update with further thoughts:
On further reflection I think this decision makes the Christina School Board and the district look bad. The justification for the original suspension was that this was the policy and they had to follow it. But once public pressure started, the school board magically found a way to reverse the policy. So Zachary did end up being treated differently than other children, which was the point of the policy in the first place.
Where does the line for lawsuits begin?
The change does not go far enough, but the policy was so poorly written that knee jerk or not it couldn’t help but be an improvement.
Awesome news. I just wonder where common sense is. Did the principal and other administrators think they were going to be in trouble if they did not suspend him. School districts around the country need to learn from this.
Going soft on terrorists. Classic pre-9/11 thinking. Must be liberal democrat socialists. Kid should have been tazed and then water boarded. Anybody see his birth certificate? I thought not. This is what happens when god is kicked out of our schools. Cub scouts bringing deadly camping utensils to school instead of Bibles. Kids should be schooled at home, safe and sound with their guns and Bibles.
TO be uber-clear: your headline suggest we reversed a decision (that we had made)…the board did not make the original decision. We acted to modify the code, make it retroactive and allow for this case to be reviewed with a different set of standards.
Amen. Thank You, drive through.
School districts like to say “that’s the policy”, as if it came from on high on stone tablets. It’s a version of “because I said so”. To paraphrase, “that’s the policy” is the last refuge of the bureaucrat.
It also means no one ever has to think again. Because, hey, there’s a policy!
It’s better that the district threw out a bad policy — even if it was done under duress — than double-down on it.
So now a 2nd grader with the same playset utensils will get 45 days in school for trouble kids, while a 1st grader will get 5? This makes sense to someone?
I’m not saying that I know the answer, however this has been a problem for years–someone across the country must have a workable solution, at least more workable than the Christina school board’s.
Did I hear that the child’s parent is a PTA president? Does the Christina school board really not act on such bad policy until the child of an uber-involved family gets hit by its unfairness?
Kudos to Mike Barbieri (quoted in the WNJ article) for recommending that the state legislature looks at this, given the deplorable job the school board has done. I agree that the legislature should stand back and let the locals take care of it, unless they hose it up, as Christina school board has done.
If it was a black kid ……..
George Evans is the mirror of Cheryl Siskin.
As noted during last spring’s school board elections, Siskin embodied Caucasian cluelessness by her indifference to the black-white achievement gap, which she said, during her campaign for reelection to the Brandywine School Board, “implied bringing the top down and the bottom up.”
Evans, on the Christina School Board, justifies his version of foolishness from a black perspective, endorsing ham-handed, Draconian and frequently nonsensical disciplinary policies: “The idea was to avoid discriminating against any student and to treat all students the same.” For 25 years, Evans has treated Christina families to this approach, endorsing capricious discipline “to avoid discrimination.”