My younger sister was attached in scool by 3 other girls and in the process of defending herself one of the girls that jumped her got a pencil stuck in her leg (my sister had her books and pencils in her hand at the time she was jumped)so my sister got suspended for 30 days and upon return she was not allowed to use writing utensils, pencils or pens, anymore. She had to drop out and get her GED because there was no way should could do her class work or take her tests.
The other three girls just got one week suspension for fighting. For some reason I think the punishments were unfair. I am not racist but I think it might have had somthing to do with race see how the punishments were distributed fairly or equally and that my sister is white and the other 3 girls that jumped her were black. Maybe they saw it as a racial fight since one of the black girls ended up with a pencil in her leg.

My dad told me a story about a guy who worked in a local factory back in the 50s or 60s. The event that happened occurred several years before he started working there.

You usually had to be disliked to be fired from this plant. to get hired, you had to know somebody who worked there also. well, this guy had gotten on the bad side of the management, and they decided to fire him.

The personnel manager had a reputation for cussing people when they had to have a meeting with him. He called the guy getting fired into his office to have a talk with him and to tell him he was fired. The guy walked into the office with a coke in his hand, the glass bottle coke back then.

The personnel manager proceeded to cuss the guy up one side and down the other. this went on for around five minutes, and he finally had enough. The guy getting fired stood up, gripped the coke bottle by the neck, then he walloped the personnel manager upside his head with it. he walked out of the office and left the plant because he knew he was fired anyways.

somebody came in and saw the personnel manager knocked out. they called the doctor and he put a few stitches in the man's head where the bottle had struck him. After that incident, the personnel manager was never heard to cuss another employee ever again.

you know, when we can again become a country where people settle things on their own, and don't have to have the courts do it for them, i'll be proud of this nation and the way we are heading again. i'm not saying i'm not proud to be an american, because we have more than a lot of other people have, but i'm not proud of who we are letting be in charge of this country and how some are being brainwashed by the politics of the day.

and enough of this cosmic dumbassery, by god, if you can't beat em, join em and sue the hell out of the school district to let them know you don't like the way they handle things.

How long until they require everything to be done on a computer because pencils and pens are pointed?

Ahh the rise of Stupidocracy. Zero tolerance hard line policies are always useless because they promote disrespect of law. Every situation is different and zero tolerance policies promote thoughtless kneejerk responses to serious issues. People impose zero tolerance policies only when they do not want to have to think or make responsible decisions based on facts.
The knife was LOCKED in his CAR? Heck the car is a far deadlier weapon than a tiny 2" blade pocketknife!
Somebody is waay too paranoid about minutia in a day and age when the Macrocosim gives us enough to worry about! Stupidocalypse!

The full article mentions the policy includes weapons and anything that could reasonably considered to be one. How many tire irons do you think are in the parking lot? I'd like to look around the principal's office and see how many metal, plastic, or wooden objects between 2" and 3' long are sitting around. You can hurt someone with just about any object you can pick up. It always gets me wondering how they cut paper, draw straight lines, or just maintain the property in these districts.

Zero tolerance is less about protecting students/faculty as it is about protecting the school district from liability if something happens on school grounds.

We are a sue crazy nation.........

I agree with jjas too! I have always stated that zero tolerance policies are not about protecting our kids. It's more about protecting the school district's pocketbook from a lawsuit by an angry parent who may claim that the school didn't do enough to protect their little Johnny!
There is no empirical data that proves zero tolerance policies work.
A good example is if an adolescent enters a school he/she doesn't attend and stabs someone. The adolescent does not care about the school's policy because he/she doesn't attend that school. So tell me, what good did the zero tolerance policy do?
A zero tolerance policy is just another libertard dream like gun control. My fear is that the children educated under a zero tolerance policy today, will become tomorrow's tyrants. MB915 had a good point with the baseball bat issue. Maybe they'll have to do away with baseball because the use of a potential weapon is required. BTW if one doesn't think that a baseball bat can be a weapon then read up on Al Capone.

The school zero tolerance argument/policies are arbitrary and capricious attitudes by bureaucrats trying to make their jobs easier…even to the lacking of common sense and fair play.

There’s a reason teachers and social workers are the first to be red-line in jury selections.

I'm pretty sure his car could cause more destruction than a two inch blade.

"A Lansingburgh parent, who says she's on a leadership committee for the district, says rules have to be enforced, regardless of who might be at fault. . . . She describes Matthew as 'a great citizen with an exceptional reputation,' but she says no one is immune from the rules."

What a great argument for liberty over tyranny. Repeal the rule so you don't catch innocent people but, then again, this woman doesn't sound like she really cares who is innocent and who is guilty. Afterall, no one is immune from the rules.

jjas you hit the nail on the head we've become a lazy nation that no longer wants to work for anything--so this kid's in the national guard an eagle scout and has a knife in his car, big deal-how many of us have had a knife in our pocket only to have it fall out in a couch or car seat and how'd they find it anyway??

really, the schools have nothing better to do, shouldn't they be cracking down on druggies and kids that will actually hurt someone with a knife?

There is absolutely so much idiocy going on in our government bureaucracies it makes me want to stock up my cabin, lock the gate and cut some trees down across the road behind me. I know we have to keep up the good fight, but they sure do wear me down. Sometimes I think, "What's the use?"----then I look at my grandson and know why we keep fighting.

I object to the notion that people who would espouse such a policy get labeled "Liberals". Such a policy liberates nothing!
It wasn't the Liberals who came up with private for profit prisons. It wasn't the liberals who paramilitarized the police with the so-called "War on Drugs" that has been the excuse for the death of liberty in our nation. We've been stumbling towards totalitarianism since Nixon authorized COINTELPRO. Corporations love Totalitarianism, they can make lots of money under totalitarian rule (and guess who makes the rules) all the commonsense rules of capitalism get tossed out the window when corporations get pliant dictators to work with. When you can impose sweatshop conditions on workers paid a survival wage (that they gotta spend in the company store, cause they can't leave) as well as ignore safety and environmental standards, you can reap mega profits (which you can use to purchase more dictators!). But, that isn't capitalism, it is Fascism and we fought a war about that once.
Of course nobody ever calls anything what it actually IS anymore, then folks might figure out what is going on for real. But then, there are a lot of hominids out there who would rather corporate mouthpieces like limbaugh and hannity do their thinking for them. Thinking is very hard for many people, who would rather have something spelled out for them to "believe". But it is always better to do your own math.

FRUGUY101 - I do agree with you about settling things on your own. For me, part of that means trying every day to let the little stuff roll off my back, so there's less that needs to be settled.

If people are being this fricking obbsessive now, what'll it be like in 30 years?Some people are just too stupid!Plus, how did they know it was in his car?

Pretty sad stad of affairs when you can get expelled for a pocket knife in your car, but can walk in with a gun and shoot the place up !

I read about this story before. The truly sad thing is the "knife" was a 2" box cutter in his vehicles tool box.