They’re serious about those snowballs
Snowball suspensions a hot item for BHS
Snowball shenanigans have led to suspensions for students at Baldwin High School in District 348.
Despite being warned by BHS administrators not to throw snowballs, the students did anyway. Each student was disciplined with a school suspension, up to three days.
“We told the students anyone caught throwing snowballs would be suspended from school,” BHS Principal Allen Poplin said.
Sophomore Chris Grissum was one of the students who received a suspension. He thinks it was unfair since he was suspended before the warning was given and because he received 3 days when students suspended later only received 1 day.
“Poplin warned them after I got suspended,” Grissum said. “I think that is unfair to me.”
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Kathy Grissum, Chris’ mom, was disappointed in the actions of the school.
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She continued to say that her son has never been in trouble before, and she knows he shouldn’t have thrown snow inside the school.“I agree he shouldn’t have done it,” Kathy Grissum said. “There should have been a detention, but not a three-day suspension.”
Suspensions are easier and cheaper for schools. For a detention they are required to provide staffing after hours as well as late transportation services. Although generally speaking they’d rather get the money for student attendance a detention can easily cost them more than the lost attendance revenue. More and more schools are moving away from detention and toward suspensions because they are a more fiscally sound method of punishment. The fact that it is academically hazardous to the students doesn’t seem to matter very much.
(Tip credit to Tori in Texas)
That’s interesting to know. More people should know about that.
A suspension can really kill a kid’s academic career, but a detention — big deal. Or maybe down the road a suspension will have as much effect as a detention — no big deal.
If parents really knew how the schools jerked them and their kids around, do you think they’d have many customers?
Schools are run like businesses today. Maybe parents should take their business elsewhere.
Since a kid never knows what infraction they might qualify for, less people will be upset if the same kid gets in trouble again.
Sounds like zero tolerance to me! A 3 day suspension (or even a 1 day suspension) seems too much for snowballing to me.
But…. again we don’t know what else these kids did. I have never seen a school suspend someone for a single incident of snowball throwing, and here in Illinois we really have snow (but not so much the last few years….. global warming?).
I also have never heard the theory that it is cheaper to suspend than detain. We have detentions, Saturday schools, Thursday after school schools….. ad infinitum. We pay teachers to supervise, but that is cheaper than the legal implications and school funding loss due to suspension. The probalem — and I’m just guessing here
is what do you do when the kid and / or parent refuses to make the kid serve the detention? In our district that is when suspension comes into play.
I almost never gave detentions. I took the kid out in the hall and “discussed his bad behavior” with him. Usually we could come to an agreement. Either that or I bored him so much that he finally agreed to behave if I’d just stop talking…..
barry
Back in “the good ol’ days” when I was in high school, you would get a 1/2 day in-school suspension for throwing snowballs. (Assuming that you didn’t hurt someone, which I suppose would have gotten a harsher punishment.)
An “in-school suspension” basically meant sitting in the principal’s office for the afternoon.
I don’t know what the punishment for a “repeat offender” would have been.
I’d like to know more about exactly what these kids were doing. (ie: throwing snowballs at passing students, throwing snowballs at each other, throwing them at the side of the building, etc.)
But I do agree that, if someone was suspended for 3 days prior to the warnings, and another suspended for 1 day after the warnings, that something is definitely wrong. (Assuming, of course, that it actually happened that way.)