Kid suspended from school for DRAWING a gun on paper?

[skers69]

http://www.kpho.com/news/13943838/detail.html

This is a crock. I can still remember in my day we had shot guns in our cars so we could go upland game hunting after class.


Student Suspended For Drawing Gun
5-Day Suspension Cut To 3 Days

POSTED: 3:06 pm PDT August 21, 2007
UPDATED: 8:04 pm PDT August 21, 2007


QUEEN CREEK, Ariz. -- A 13-year-old student who drew a picture of a gun on his homework at Payne Junior High School in Queen Creek was initially suspended for at least five days, but his father was able to slash it to three days.

The Mosteller family moved to Chandler from Colorado Springs only four weeks ago, but it's not the kind of greeting Paula Mosteller said she was expecting.

Her 13-year-old son was suspended from school because he drew a picture of a gun on homework.


"My son is a very good boy," Mosteller said.

"He doesn't get into trouble. There was nothing on the paper that would signify that it was a threat of any form," she said.

The principal at Payne Junior High School kept the actual drawing.

The picture was enough to get him suspended, initially, for five days.

"He was just basically doodling and not thinking a lot about it," Mosteller said.

CBS 5 News tried to get more details from the Chandler Unified School District but were told, "Federal privacy law forbids the school or district from discussing student discipline."

"We're not advocates for guns," Mosteller said.

SURVEY: What Do You Think?

"We don't have guns in our home. We don't promote the use of guns. My son was just basically doodling on a piece of paper," she said.

After the father went to the school and talked to the principal, the suspension was trimmed to three days.






CBS 5 News investigated the rules students must follow while at school. There's nothing in a portion of the student handbook that addresses conduct to indicate the drawing of a weapon poses threat.

There is a rule that says students should not engage in "Threatening an educational institution by interference with or disruption of the school."
Copyright 2007 by KPHO.com. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

[30 cal slob]

1. get a lawyer
2. sue the bastards

 

[The Lone Haranguer]

The madness has even infected my adopted home state.

 

[Blackbeard]

He should turn it in at the next gun buyback event for $100.

 

[armoredman]

Chandler -one of the richest mini cities in the Phoenix area, where a lot the Kali ex-pats hang. Ick. Deport 'em all, with thier LIEberal ideas.

 

[Steve499]

If there was a lick of fairness in this, he should only have gotten a picture of a kid in 5 day suspension! What could better inspire confidence in parents for their children's safety than to know their kids are safe from gun pictures. The world seems full of idiots. Full.

 

[Cannonball888]

A picture of a gun could cause a nasty paper cut.

 

[Bullseye57]

If I were the parent, I would have taken my child's History textbook and shown all the pictures of guns within the school's curriculum/reference materials. Then asked if they planned on suspending all the school district's administrators and superintendents who approved that overtly threatening reference material for my child's education.

This situation is just proof that stupidity has no bounds and common sense isn't common.

R,
Bullseye

 

[Cannonball888]

I like your idea, Bullseye!

 

[antsi]

In psychiatry, they call it "magical thinking." Delusions such as the idea that a child's drawing of a firearm somehow assumes the properties of an actual firearm. It is a sign of psychosis.

Bullseye: I would be surprised if the textbooks have not been "modernized" to eliminate any images of firearms.

 

[Bullseye57]

I've always had a way to cut through the smoke and get to the root of the problem. If I were a lawyer, that school would have my name on the front of it when I got through with it. I'd also look in the library and find a multitude of examples of firearms pictures in the non-fiction/history section - again they are corrupting my child's mind with all that firearm propaganda. Since we don't have guns at home - he must have learned this at school with all this exposure to illustrations depicting firearms/battle scenes.

Modernized to sanitize out firearms - not in any I've seen. My kid's fifth grade history book is filled with Revolutionary and Civil War pictures of battles and firearms - there's even a full-page one of Edmund Ruffin sitting on top of a cannon, at Ft. Sumpter, with a muzzle loading rifle leaning across his knee. Heck there's plenty of battle scene paintings showing whole armies going at it, that must be worth a ton of days suspension. WOW, we gotta suspend the entire Federal government because of all those pictures on display in the national museums and archives!

This is pure baloney!

R,
Bullseye

 

[romma]

We don't have guns in our home. We don't promote the use of guns. My son was just basically doodling on a piece of paper," she said.

Now a serious target for home invasion with this proclaimation to the media..

This family is originally from Co, and moved to AZ and have this Anti-gun mentality?

I feel a little better about CT now!

 

[Bullseye57]

There's more - next we should suspend all the people in the states of West Virginia, Michigan, Delaware, and Wyoming, because their state flags all have pictures of firearms on them.

R,
Bullseye

 

[shooter503]

I see the family moved from Colorado Springs - which has about as much connection with Colorado as San Francisco does with California.

 

[Correia]

Ick. Deport 'em all, with thier LIEberal ideas.

Stuff like that is exactly why Oleg took an ax to the old L&P.

Oleg wants constructive threads. Come up with some good ideas. Get the contact info for the school board.

Instead of complaining, let's come up with something useful. When somebody comes up with a good plan, take it over to Activism.

 

[Pilgrim]

"We don't have guns in our home. We don't promote the use of guns. My son was just basically doodling on a piece of paper," she said.

After the father went to the school and talked to the principal, the suspension was trimmed to three days.

Interesting dynamics here.

Politically correct thinking family gets bit on the bottom by free thinking son.

Politically correct thinking dad accepts authority of school to regulate thought crime and negotiates for lesser sentence, much like a convicted criminal negotiates freedom for parole instead of serving full sentence.

Pilgrim

 

[armedandsafe]

Bullseye: I would be surprised if the textbooks have not been "modernized" to eliminate any images of firearms.

Have him pay for lunch with nothing but Massachusets quarters. That'll scare the whatever out of 'em.

Pops

 

[Oleg Volk]

Deport 'em all, with thier LIEberal ideas.

Stuff like that is exactly why Oleg took an ax to the old L&P.

In the future, I won't close whole forums. But I will close accounts of people who post more noise than signal (that requires an overall moderator agreement, so no one person's bias would be sufficient).

 

[davinci]

if they suspended him for "drawing something we don't believe in" then the parents should keep him home from school during Art class because the parents don't believe in "clay sculpture" or something equally ludacris.

Maybe it's best just to bite one's tongue and say "son, don't do that...folks get apprehensive about guns in schools after all the horrible things that have happened in society this past decade in schools."

 

[Regolith]

Holy crap. I guess I'd have been expelled if they ever got hold of some of my notebooks from JH and HS.

I never doodled on my homework, though. Mostly because I was a bit obsessive about making sure my work was fairly neat.

 

[Speer]

If I were the parent, I would have taken my child's History textbook and shown all the pictures of guns within the school's curriculum/reference materials.

Seriously.

Either way, there'd be a fight. Screw that.

 

[fletcher]

I would have been expelled starting in kindergarten if they enforced stuff like that.

Seems that we see this at least once every couple months. They're worried about having a bad environment, but this "zero tolerance" approach does no more than create an angry student punished unjustifiably.

 

[ED21]

The survey indicated 91% of the people felt this was unjust.

Do you think a student should be suspended from school for drawing a picture of a gun with no threatening message?
Choice Votes Percentage of 1563 Votes
Yes 92 6%
No 1420 91%
I'm not sure. 51 3%
Thanks for your vote.

What has become of our society? We allow the teachers and school systems to push this one sided agenda on our children and consequently the rest of us. We need to take back the schools where the three "R's" were the focus. Kids were allowed to be kids. When I was in school, it was cool or neat to draw pictures of guns and daggers and swords and cars and what ever else we wanted to draw. I could go on and on but better take the high road.

 

[Joe Demko]

The first step would have been for the parent to find out exactly which part of the school district's discipline code was violated and what the prescribed penalty is for that violation. Anything that warrants a five day suspension is pretty serious and should be spelled out in the discipline code. Said code should also be easily available on the district's website and in the student handbook.
If, it turns out, there really is some goofy rule that makes drawing a picture of a gun a violation of weapons policy, the next step is to change the discipline code. That means going through the schoolboard. One would begin by attending meetings and sending POLITE letters. Acting like a loudmouth guncrank will not make a lot of positive difference. (BTW, THR members from all over the US sending a lot of "you guys are commies and you suck!" emails to this district's staff and board won't help either.)
If, OTOH, there is no such rule, then the suspension may be a reflection of the administrator's personal attitude towards guns, it may be that there is more to the story, etc. If it really is a case of an over-reaching administrator, once again one goes to the schoolboard for an appeal. One goes prepared with knowledge of the discipline code. One goes and behaves in a polite, business-like manner. Going in and acting like a loudmouth guncrank and hollering about the 2A will be counterproductive. The ONLY issue that must be addressed is what the school's discipline code says and whether that code was properly applied.

 

[PILMAN]

I looked at the drawing, it looks like a block with smiley faces. Maybe he was drawing a blowdrier or a power drill? I can't believe he got suspended for that, I remember a class where we had to draw what profession we wanted to be when we grow up and I drew a cop with a gun. Didn't get in trouble for that, that was maybe 12 years ago?

Anyways, I wouldn't mind contacting the school and like someone mentioned, history books contain plenty of images of guns. Perhaps that could be mentioned?