ZeroIntelligence.net

…is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Zero tolerance plan embarrasses district

[Rio Rancho] The latest episode involves a 13-year-old middle school boy who was suspended for five days for having heartburn-relief medicine - for controlling intestinal gas - in his possession. Somebody alert the Drug Enforcement Administration.
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In previous “zero tolerance” cases in Rio Rancho, school officials suspended: a high school freshman girl for having a tiny pocket knife in her backpack; a student who drove a car to school, saying he was unaware it contained a hunting knife and a loaded gun; a ninth-grade girl for sporting pink hair; a student for manipulating a soda machine to dispense two sodas for the price of one; and a high school sophomore for possession of “a sharpened object” - an altered plastic spoon-fork, or “spork.”

A spork? Yes, a plastic spork. Now if it was a knispoon I could see the problem, but a spork?

The boy’s mother, who has - and should have - more of a say over how to handle her son’s health than any school official, had directed her son to keep the medication in his pocket and not take it to the school nurse, as school policy directs. She feared embarrassment for her son. This might not have complied with school regulations. But because it was so entirely understandable a course of parental action, it’s now the the school district that should be embarrassed.
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School officials could have called the mother, informed her of the school policy and the reasoning behind it and asked how they might help her and her son comply. Instead, once again, the district threatened to turn a simple indiscretion into a federal case.

Rio Rancho is consistently in the news for their egregious policies and their horrific handling of them. I fear they will continue to be as they seem incapable of getting the point that what they are doing is ridiculous.

(Tip credit to Ilyka)