I did find out something interesting, however. I could have been a cub scout when I started the first grade at 5 years of age. I thank God that if I had brought a knife to school–my teacher had enough common sense/maturity to react to the situation in a manner that made sense! What’s going on today?

I am exhausted and it is not over yet…one more day of media reax.

Evidently, the zero policy of Delaware for this grade level needs
to go under construction and be revised to accomodate the children
in early stages of development. There is not one child at this early
age who would be carrying a weapon for any criminal activity uses in
the first place. Zachary carried his swiss army knife with all the
cool camping utencils in it with pride because he was given it from
scouts which he thinks is mighty cool to have received it from.
Goodness gracious, what on earth is the zero policy doing with it’s
implimentation of 45 day reform school. In poor Zachary’s mind he
and his family are being punished for nothing, and all this does is
make a youngster dislike school. Lets use some discretion like every
one is saying, and deal with this as it should be. Swiss army knifes
or knifes are not allowed at schools and considered to be weapons,
so when one is not considered a weapon, that should be taken into
account, and the teacher could simply take it from the child, and
let him know that it is not allowed and that if he wanted it back
his mother could get it from the teacher or office. Maybe the principal could have a brief talk with this first grader to explain
that anything with a knife blade on it is considered by the school
to be a weapon, and although they know he had no plan to use the
knife blade part of the camping set, that they require he not ever
bring it to school again because it breaks the school rules.
That should be sufficient. This overkill 45 day reform is outlandish
and simply unreasonable, not required, and the wrong policy to have
in place for this situation. COME ON SCHOOL STAFF, VOTE FOR CHANGE
ON ZERO POLICY because this is totally ridicules, and UNFAIR for
little kids.

Back to the schools, the reason these rules are in place is because these potential weapons could be used to hurt someone. If a kid had that intent, that is serious and should be dealt with as such. When a kid innocently brings in something potentially dangerous, there still could be accidents, so it should still be dealt with. However, they are not the same offense. I don’t think it’s asking too much for there to be some assessment of intent.

Let’s imagine that this was the death penalty. Would you be in favor of going through with an execution if there was evidence that would exonerate the person, even if they had gone through all of their appeals? Isn’t this like a Governor doing a last minute stay of the execution once new evidence has been presented?

Your stand seems to be that the kid should suffer the consequences just like other kids (that we now admit had varying degrees of culpability) to prove that this is a stupid law? Really?

I think you and I agree that the zero-tolerance rules are too inflexible. The question is why in the world should you continue to treat a poorly written rule as if it were well written? Once the problem has been identified, it is unforgivable to continue doing it wrong.

How would you like your kid to be treated this way? I recognize that some kids are treated this way and have not been able to get the attention that Zachary has, but hopefully no one else will have to, including Zachary.