TRI In The News
Overzealous on Zero Tolerance
From One News Now
Original article available here
Attorney John Whitehead, a critic of obsessive zero-tolerance policies in schools, is concerned that youngsters are being treated as criminals for simply doing childish things.
In a Washington Post article, columnist Robert McCartney implies parents are beginning to take action against the extreme zero-tolerance policies applied by many of the nation's schools. Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead, who has worked on many zero-tolerance cases, says parents are now forming groups to oppose unreasonable punishment for minor offenses. He says they are asking schools to at least look at a student's intent.
"When students get within the confines of some of these crazy zero-tolerance policies -- where they're doing childish behavior and they're arrested, which is becoming the norm now -- [school officials are] calling the police to the school, children are being handcuffed behind their backs, put in the car, and driven down to the police station," states the attorney.
Whitehead says more parents are going to have to band together and demand changes so students are not being treated as criminals for childish behavior.
"I mean, you're having kids now [being] taken down to the police station for food fights," he explains. "What I advocate is keeping the kids in school [for] in-school detention and stop throwing them out of school."
Currently, Whitehead is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a student was suspended for the remainder of the year for shooting harmless spit wads in the hallway.
