Can your kid get into trouble for playing with a two-inch LEGO gun at school? Here's a story that illustrates why we should have zero tolerance for inane "zero tolerance policies":
Patrick Timoney, a 9-year-old student at PS 52 in Staten Island, N.Y., was in the school cafeteria Tuesday playing with LEGOs when he was taken to the principal’s office and threatened with suspension. One of his toys was a LEGO policeman that holds a 2-inch plastic gun. The school has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to toy guns. [...]
The boy’s mother, Laura Timoney, 44, was fuming over the issue.
“You don’t traumatize a child who loved to go to school, who wanted to be early every day to school, you don’t make him cry, you don’t make him fill out statements,” she told WNBC, holding back tears. “You don’t do it.”
I know what you mean. When I was in high school (even back then), my tiny school district had a zero-tolerance policy for fighting. Another girl tried to beat me up on the school bus so to protect myself I covered my head with my hands, dropped to the floor, and screamed (knowing that if I did anything else I'd get suspended).
Yet I still got called out of class an hour later, taken to the city police station (gotta love small towns), my mother was called, and I was suspended. After an investigation my suspension eventually got recorded as three excused absences, though. My mother was upset at me at first when she got a call to come down to the police station, but after hearing what REALLY happened (and it's common knowledge that this girl was a bully) and how the chief of police himself felt bad for me, she got soooo pissed off at the vice-principle for insisting that I be taken to the police station too.
The bully got sent to alternative school for 3 years and I got a 3 day mini-vacation. But it still never should have happened in the first place.