Pennsylvania school uncovers ‘terrorist’ threat
Ten year-old Kelli Ilyankoff, a student at Trinity South Elementary School, isn’t your typical terrorist. In fact you have to use some pretty suspect logic, combine it with a poorly worded policy and add a dash of incompetent administration in order to reach that definition. Principal Charles Braden managed to do just that.
A female classmate, Kelli’s friend, had passed her a piece of paper with a sketch depicting a gravestone with a third child’s name on it. Kelli, in turn, sketched another tombstone with her friend’s name, along with “1993-2004 � nobody cares about you.”
The paper was confiscated by their student teacher, torn up and discarded. After talking with another teacher the paper was reassembled and given to Braden.
Kelli spent Wednesday in Braden’s office before his decision to suspend her.
“I can understand, if she is drawing a picture of someone bleeding and wrote, ‘This is you. This is what I’m going to do to you,’” said Tami Ilyankoff, Kelli’s mother. “But this is ridiculous.”
…
Braden would not comment.“I’m not allowed to discuss anything of a confidential student matter,” he said.
Trinity Superintendent John Springston would not specifically comment about Kelli’s suspension.
“If we think something is a threat of any nature, we have to take it seriously,” he said.
Interestingly enough the Halloween decorations this year featured tombstones with teachers’ names. Administrative logic deems it appropriate to have kids make tombstones for public display but deems it a threat when the same thing is done in a giggle fit with the cooperation of the person named.
The policy defines terrorism as “a threat to commit violence communicated with the intent to terrorize another”. In order to arrive at their conclusion that Kelli terrorized her friend you would have to define laughing together as communicating an intent to terrorize.
“If we think something is a threat of any nature, we have to take it seriously,” he said.
How can anyone take him seriously?
because HE is a threat.
Thanks to Opinion Journal at the Wall Street Journal, I’ve found what is destined to become one of my favorite blogs. Thank you.
The really dangerous threat here is the incompetence at the head of a school, and the trickle down stupidity it re-affirms from top to bottom…
This illustrates the lowest common denominator of common sense and intelligence…what inspired teacher would want to work and report to this kind of management…including the board.
“Poorly written policy” coupled with idiotic thinking equals the result in this situation…
Zero Tolerance = reductio ad absurdum.
In logic, this argument disproves the propostion — unless you are a politically correct automaton of the federal school system.
I removed my son from government school when I discovered zero tolerance meant he couldn’t defend himself if attacked by another child because, so the dean said, it would lead to open gang warfare throughout the school (junior high)! Imagine, a slap in the face with a notebook leading to M.A.D.!! Only in the liberal mind!
Someone should give those over zealous goofs a taste of their own medicine and sick Americans United for the Seperation of Church and State on them. The name of the school clearly forces children to accept the dogma of the Holy Trinity and therefore renders Muslim, Jewish, and certain domaninations of Christian children unable to learn.
Wouldn’t it be ironic?
When I read about these preposterously p.c. morons that are running the “asylums” of government schools these days, I am SO HAPPY that my wife & I chose to never subject our dear children to the loony (and worse) ministrations of the edu-crats. I say this as a graduate of public K-12 schools and universities, and holder of an M.Ed. from Wayne State U., and thus no stranger to the fads, fashions and enthusiasms of the self-annointed academic/educratic elites.
There’s no place like homeschool!
Braden would not comment.
“I’m not allowed to discuss anything of a confidential student matter,” he said.
This brings to mind Janet Reno, stonewalling
numerous Senate investigations with the statement: “I’m sorry, Senator, but I cannot
comment about ongoing investigations.”
(Or words to that effect.)
They have this strategy down pat.
There’s an A.S.S. HOLE Prize which should be awarded to this dumb schmuck principal Braden and the similar dumb schmuck teacher who blew this thing totally out of what it is: A joke that young kids revel in. So if they were allowed to vent it and let all that silliness come out when young, they will not grow into being a dumb schmuck as these “educators”…
educators? My ass!
I graduated from H.S.in 1960, so I guess that makes me ancient. I can remember a day when people did not assume the worst and everyone was at ease with each other. With this going on in our schools it is no wonder that kids (and adults) are going nuts. There was one day when a friend tole me about an Enfield rifle that he had bought by mail order. I told him I would like to see it. The next day he brought it to school, walked openly with it down the hall and put it in the corner of the class room for me to see at break time. Guess what, nobody was killed, nobody was in trouble. That was before the fear mongers, gun control advocates and idiots were teaching our present day idiot teachers. Try bringing a pen knife to school today… real dangerous.
“Thanks to Opinion Journal at the Wall Street Journal, I’ve found what is destined to become one of my favorite blogs. Thank you.”
Ditto
Never mind a pen knife, a 1t grader was suspended when a “Dangerous weapon” fell from his pocket.
The weapon?
A pair of nail clippers, that did not even have a file on it.
That would have to be one damn creative 7-year-old, if you ask me, to make a pair of nail clippers into a weapon.
“Don’t mess with me, or you’ll get a manicure!”
3-20-2006 I was so shocked to find this information about my daughter on the internet.
My daughter and her friend were goofing around with each other. They drew pictures of tomb stones and put their OWN names on them. Neither one of them would ever do anything to hurt anyone or anything. The teacher who did this did not like my child at all. You see, Kelli would sometimes find errors that the teacher would make and point them out to her in front of the whole class. Yes, she is a brainaic and flaunts it. So the teacher had it in for her from the beginning. The school system sucks and it’s not right what they did to her. She has never made fun of anyone or put down someone for being different or having disiblities of a mental or physical nature. She is a wonderful girl who just rubbed the teacher the wrong way. Why? Beacause she’s extremely intelligent.
Teachers and principals take things way too far and blow them out of porportion. She and her friend Michelle did nothing wrong. Nothing at all. If they didn’t like each other, then why did they spend their suspended day together at MY house playing all day????? Administrative people are the cause for most of the kids on prosac and ridilin today. My children are fine and I’m not going to let anyone drive them crazy. It’s bad enough they have to put up with insane morons everyday, they don’t need to be one of them. This jerk takes the ‘prince’ and ‘pal’ out of principal. When you do, what do you get?? NOTHING. And that’s what he is, a big fat NOTHING. Obviously he wasn’t loved as a child.
Suspending her was the idiotic principals idea. He has not liked me from the time Kelli was in the 2nd. grade. She had the permission of her teacher to bring in her little Pomeranian puppy for show and tell. The stupid principal saw the dog and flipped. He yelled, “GET THAT THING OUT OF MY SCHOOL NOW!!!!” Thing?? THING???? oh boy did that cause trouble for him. I chewed him out big time. Then at the beginning of her 5th. grade year, he put her in the room with the one teacher I truely despised and he did this deliberately. I drove her to school that day to discuss this with him. Didn’t work. With out going into any quotes, here’s what he was TRYING to say with out actually saying it: “I’m a total freaking jerk and don’t deserve the privledge of being in charge of this school. I wish someone would just fire me because I’m soooooooooooo freaking stupid.” Need I say more????? Signed, Kelli’s mother, Tami.