Common Sense Prevails, Punishment Revised for First-Grader Who Brought Camping Utensil to Delaware School: Zachary Christie Back in School
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on October 15, 2009
Six-year-old Zachary Christie with his parents on Today Show with Meredith Viera
Common sense, for once, has prevailed. I wrote about this story a few days ago: New Low: Delaware First-Grader Kicked Out of School for Bringing Camping Utensil to Use at Lunch.
Outraged people from around the country, thousands going to the Help Zachary website, and a national TV appearance on the Today Show, seem to have made a difference for little Zachary Christie.
Now the Delaware school district responsible for wanting to send the 6-year-old to reform school for 45 days for bringing his Cub Scout camping “spork” to school have modified their policy for younger students.
While there is still that robot-minded “zero tolerance” in Delaware schools, it’s a start.
From MSNBC TODAY People: Boy suspended over utensil gets reprieve:
Yesterday he faced 45 days in reform school. This morning, Zachary Christie is on his way to school for the first time since he made the mistake of taking his favorite camping utensil to school and ran into his Delaware school system’s zero-tolerance policy.
On Tuesday night the school board made a hasty change to its code of conduct. The seven-member board voted unanimously to reduce the punishment for kindergartners and first-graders who bring weapons to school or commit other violent offenses to a suspension ranging from three to five days.
“I want to get him back as soon as possible. I want to put this behind him as soon as possible,” said Debbie Christie, Zachary’s mother, said after the board meeting Tuesday night. “But I also want him to know that he has a voice, and when things are not right, he can stand up and speak out against them.”
Early Wednesday morning Christie sent a text message to TODAY producers, saying that Zachary was headed off to school.
Christie thanked the school board for acting quickly but said it was only the first step toward a necessary overhaul of the school system’s code of conduct. A spokeswoman for the school district said more changes were possible in the coming months.
School board member John Mackenzie told The Associated Press before the meeting that he was surprised school officials did not use common sense and disregard the policy in Zachary’s case. The need for common sense to prevail over the letter of the law was a recurring theme among the boy’s supporters and school safety experts.
“When that common sense is missing, it sends a message of inconsistency to students, which actually creates a less safe environment,” said Kenneth S. Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm. “People have to understand that assessing on a case-by-case basis doesn’t automatically equate to being soft or unsafe.”
Not everyone believed the school district was out of line.
Jennifer Jankowski, who runs the special education programs at Jennie Smith Elementary in Newark, said schools need to be vigilant about protecting students. If Zachary or another student had been hurt by the knife, she said, the district would have taken the blame.
“If we can’t punish him, then what about kids that did bring (a weapon) for bad things?” Jankowski said. “There’s more to the school’s side than just us being mean and not taking this child’s interests into account.”
A Swiss Army-type combination of fork, spoon, bottle opener and knife, the tool has been Zachary’s favorite ever since he got it to take on Cub Scout camping expeditions. “He eats dinner with it, breakfast and everything else, so it never occurred to him that this would have been something wrong to do,” the 6-year-old’s mother told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Tuesday morning from Newark, Del.
Zachary, an A student who sometimes wears a shirt and tie to school just because he likes to, told Vieira he put the tool in his pocket on Sept. 29 for a very simple reason: “To eat lunch with. I had absolutely no idea this was going to happen. I wasn’t thinking about this. I was thinking about having lunch with it.”
Related reading:
Dvorak Uncensored: Zero Tolerance School Policies Are Out Of Control
New York Times: It’s a Fork, It’s a Spoon, It’s a … Weapon?
Delaware Liberal: Zachary’s Story Goes National
QandO: 0% Tolerance; 100% Nonsense
PoliGazette: Zero-Tolerance Policies Go Bonkers…Again
Resolute Determination: 6 Year old cub scout gets suspended in Delaware… Educating for the future…
Controlling Authority: Annals of Zero Tolerance
AskCharly: Six-year-old sent to reform school for bringing a “weapon” (Cub Scout camping cutlery) to school
Chicken Heart: Zachary Christie – Help Zachary
Unfair Doctrine: Student Suspended for Anti-Obama T-Shirt
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