Texas school administrators “Just Say No” to discretion
Schools taken to task over law
Last year the Texas legislature passed a law specifically granting school administrators discretion to consider circumstances surrounding a scholastic rules violation and the history of the offender. It seems that the administrators really don’t want this discretion and they are pulling their zero tolerance blankets over their heads.
John Tverbakk, the father of a 13-year-old honor roll student at Cook Middle School in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, thinks school officials ignored a new law intended to relax zero-tolerance policies when they sent his daughter to an alternative school for six weeks for holding a 1-ounce test tube of beer.
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“The student said it was Corona, and Veronica thought she was joking, so she held it and pretended to drink it and handed it back to the girl,” Tverbakk said.
The girl who brought the beer to school and passed it around received the same punishment.
Before the anti-zero-tolerance law was crafted school officials were forced to punish students according to very narrow sentencing guidelines, taking mitigating circumstances into consideration only for the duration of punishment within those narrow guidelines. And now?
Durham contends that state law compels the school to punish alcohol possession with a mandatory six to nine weeks of placement in an alternative education program, and the only discretion HB 603 would allow in such a case is in respect to the length of the placement.
Officials from two nearby school districts, Katy ISD and Houston ISD, where alcohol possession is also a Level 4 infraction, agreed with Durham.
Did they simply not read the new law or are they so desperate to avoid responsibility that they are doing the equivalent of children jamming fingers in their ears and yelling “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!”? In either case state lawmakers are not particularly amused.
[Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, who co-wrote House Bill 603 to curtail zero-tolerance discipline] said he intends to revisit the issue in the next legislative session to tweak the bill’s language to make it clear the extent to which an administrator can exercise discretion.
“We wrote that bill to put some common sense into the discipline process,” Eissler said.
In a second item profiled in this story a 15 year-old Cypress Falls High School student found a case on the ground and took it onto the bus. He later discovered it contained a gun and turned it over to the school official on the bus. He was expelled for a year.
Contact Information:
CFISD Superintendent David Anthony
Cook Middle School Principal Robert Borneman
Cypress Falls High School Principal Sarah Harty
Re: the second student. That’s just great, try to do the right thing and get nailed.
The kid who brought the beer to school deserved whatever punishment was handed out. Again, parents need to exercise MUCH more control on what goes out of the house in the morning.
The parents of the kid who got the beer handed to her in a test tube should get a lawyer and sue. Considering the very harsh rules about alcohol on school grounds, wasn’t it reasonable for the kid to assume that the substance in the test tube was not alcohol?
With the national publicity her case will now get, I’ll bet the school will back down. That seems to be the new pattern this year. Last year it was “Inordinately harsh punisment–>outcry–>administration stands firm–>parents sue–>judge rules against school district–>administration gives in, while still insisting they were right.”
This year it’s: “Inordinately harsh punshment–>outcry–>parents begin talking about suing–>Administration backs down, making lame excuse about “new information coming to light” or some such thing.” I guess that’s progress of a sort.
As for the other case where the kid found the gun, I suspect there is more to that story than is being reported. But if the facts are as reported, I bet the kid now wishes he’d just dumped it in a trash can, despite the danger that some low-life might find it and use it. Schools are supposed to be teaching our kids to be responsible, but the ZT rules are teaching them to “look out for No. 1.”
Beyond the idocy inherent in ZT there is another example of mindlessness here. The central issue to the school district is THE GUN. The student is punished simply because he had THE GUN. His actions are of no consequence. There was no way this student could do the right thing.
Try to break down the dilemna the student found himself in. He finds the box and picks it up with out knowing what is inside. According to the story here the box was already on the grounds so he did not even bring it to the school. When the student discovered the box contained a gun what was he to do? Logically he had the following choices:
1) Abandon the box and gun so that he would not be found with it.
2) Turn it in to an official at the school.
3) Keep it, smuggle it out of the school and dispose of it once off school property.
No responsible person should suggest that option 1 was in any way proper. The next person that finds the box could use it violently.
The student chose option 2 and recieved an expulsion as a result.
Choosing option 3 is not much better. First there is the risk that the student could be caught with the gun on school grounds and would then have to explain why they were hiding it. Once off school grounds they are left with the same options, abandon it or turn it in. Abandoning it is just as bad off campus as on. Turning it in will expose the student to the same expulsion as he got if it comes out that he found it on school grounds.
So the school has just taught this student and any others that are paying attention that if you find a weapon on school grounds, hide it until you can smuggle it off campus and then turn it in to authorities but lie about where you found it.
Class dismissed….
In the first case, the girl probably should’ve been suspended for a couple of weeks. In the second, that’s horrible. It’s not the first I’ve heard of such a thing though. Honestly I’d say just leave the gun where he found it and keep his mouth shut. It just doesn’t pay to be a “good citizen” anymore.
One problem in both these cases is that the students didn’t know what to do when they ran across these objects, and I’ll bet the school system hadn’t told its students what to do in these kinds of situations. When the girl was offered the test tube of beer, and she didn’t even believe it was beer, what was she supposed to do–recoil in horror and run screeching to the nearest teacher? If she wasn’t supposed to take the test tube because of what the other student had told her, then the school district should have had a policy in place for students to follow. The schools should hold assemblies at the beginning of each year, and tell the students not to take possession of anything that is contraband, or even appears to be contraband. That would drastically reduce these kinds of cases. The NRA has a safety program for children, telling them what to do if they run across a gun; the instructions are not to pick up the gun, but to leave the area and report it to an adult. The schools should have similar programs.
What’s additionally sad about the reported gun case is that Representative Eissler, quoted in the article, also supported HB 625 in this year’s Texas legislature, which directly addressed this issue: that if a student finds a contrband item - either by coming across it, or having accidently picked it up, or discovered that it was a “throw down” item because some other student was trying to frame them — and reports it immediately to authorities, the student will not be punished.
HB 625 passed overwhelmingly in the House, but unfortunately the regular session ran out of time before it could be considered in the Senate.
It’s a common sense measure, and needs a hearing again in the state capitol, if school districts themselves won’t adopt such safety measures on their own.
I am the father of the girl who happened to hold the test tube that supposedly was filled with beer. We asked the school for test results of the vial to prove to us that it was beer, but we where told that they did not send it to a lab for testing. Also, when we asked if the school had given any instructions to the kids with regards to telling them what to do with alcohol in situations like this, they referred to a DARE program that the elementary school had THREE years ago. The one thing that totally grossed me out and made me decide to take this fight for all kids out there, was an example that I mentioned to the principal. I said: “Imagine an adult walking in to the school with a box of chocolates filled with liquor. The adult stumble, and the chocolate falls on the floor, kids come to help, pick up the chocolates to hand it to the adult. The kid is now in possession of alcohol, and what is the penalty? His reply was same penalty as my daughter!” We have talked to lawyers; however we have been told that it will be very expensive and risky for us. Maybe there is a lawyer out there who specialize in education law that will be interested.
School discipline is not about justice; it’s about controlling the masses. School officials are afraid that if they dismiss charges against one student because of extenuating circumstances, then others will commit the same offense, then claim they deserve the same consideration that the first student got. And if that first student happens to be white, then minority students and their parents will claim that treating them any differently constitutes racism. One major problem is that school discipline has always been summary; students have never enjoyed the same protections (such as presumption of innocence) that they would have in the criminal justice system. This expedited system may be adequate for everyday, typical infractions and punishments, but when people start using it for expellable offenses, it falls short. Also, the school system is prosecutor, judge, and jury. Suppose you were charged with a crime, and the judge and jurors at your trial were all employed by the police department or district attorney’s office. That’s exactly what happens with school board discipline hearings. The members often know the principals who refer students for expulsion, and they have a conflict of interest between protecting the rights of the accused and keeping other students from misbehaving. And don’t forget politics.
I’ll probably never have children, but if they do, they’re attending private school. Period. End of discussion.
John, I strongly recommend getting that lawyer. The ACLU may help, though they have lately backed off of scholastic cases with the exception of free speech issues. You may have better luck getting assistance from the Rutherford Institute. They are a non-profit organization with an excellent track record against zero tolerance abuses. They have an online assistance request form here: http://www.rutherford.org/help_now/online_help_request_form.asp.
Both groups could likely assist you in finding local representation if they are not able to help you themselves.
Common Sense - an oxymoron
As a state congressman once told me, paraphrasing another well-known quote, “you can’t legislate common sense”!
this reporter from Fox 26 has a really good story on zero tolerance in spring isd airing on fox 26 news tonight (thursday)…he also has it on his blog.
www.isiahcarey.blogspot.com