Zero tolerance policies are a popular political tool enacted by many school districts.  In practice, however, these guidelines usually translate into “zero intelligence” policy.  Here are some examples:

Facts About Zero-Tolerance School Policies

• The Strategy Center, a California-based civil rights group that tracks zero tolerance school policies found that at least 12,000 tickets were issued to tardy or truant students by Los Angeles Police Department and school security officers in 2008. These tickets tarnished students’ records and brought them into the juvenile court system, with fines of up to $250 for repeat offenders.
• A class action lawsuit was filed by the New York Civil Liberties union in January of 2010 against the city for using “excessive force” in middle school and high schools. A 12-year-old sixth-grader, identified in the lawsuit as M.M., was arrested in March of 2009 for doodling on her desk at the Hunts Point School.

News Briefs About Zero Tolerance School Policies

• In Georgia, a middle school student was suspended for 4 days after telling his teacher that he found a knife in his backback.  Jack   Persyn,  13,  promptly  told  his teacher  when  he  discovered the small pocket knife in a school bag that his aunt had bought at a yard sale.  So once again, zero brain, zero  tolerance rules punish a child who did everything right.  “I can see a one hour detention if they had to do something,” says Bill Persyn, his father.  “But this is nonsense.”  (The Week 1/20/12, page 6)
• In Delaware, officials found some common sense after (losing it momentarily to insanity) and now say that they won’t charge an 11-year-old girl with a “deadly weapon” offense, after she brought a cake and a serving knife to her elementary school. The child, Kasia Haughton, said a teacher used the knife to serve the cake but then later reported her under the schools zero  tolerance  policy  for  weapons. The girl’s five day  suspension was also dismissed. (Source: USA Today, 4-6-09, p. 9A)
• In Rhode Island, a second-grader violated his school’s no-weapons policy when he glued toy soldiers to his hat as part of a patriotic theme for a class project. School officials  objected to the tiny guns the soldiers carried, and disciplined the boy. “The issue for us,” said a school official, “was the zero-tolerance for weapons.” (The Week, 7-2-10, p. 4)
• In 2007, a zero-tolerance school policies landed a 7-year-old boy in Oklahoma City  in-school suspension for the rest of the day, after he used his fingers to make a gun gesture at school, pointing it at at the wall. Lydia Fox, the mother of the first-grader, says the district over-reacted. Crazier still, he is not the first child to receive a “finger-gun” suspension. (USA Today, 3-8-2011, p. 9A)
• In Hilton Head Island, South Carolina,  a  10-year-old elementary  school  student was  suspended  after  his  pencil sharpener broke and he did not immediately discard the blade. Authorities say a teacher at Hilton Head Island International Baccalaureate Elementary School found the small blade on the boy in class. The blade was regarded as a “weapon” under the school’s zero-tolerance policies.
• In Texas, a 4-year-old boy in the Mesquite Independent School District was placed on suspension for having “floppy hair.” Taylor Pugh’s mother, Elizabeth Taylor, was fighting the suspension. (USA Today, 1-12-2010, p. 9a)