This is an old news item but the rules that let them do this are still in place.
In my Virginia school district the principal is required to request a 1 year suspension for drugs or fake drugs. Then some special punishment board of the school board decides what what school sentence is handed down. I don’t know if you even get to attend that meeting.
The law spells out a maximum suspension of one year. The district’s policies require the principal to request the maximum suspension.
They still have a legal requirement to provide an “appropriate free public education” during this “suspension” and they still want to keep the federal dollars your kid brings to the district by attendance - so there is an alternative school. I have no idea what that looks like in my district.
Surely there’s a phone call…
“Ma’am, this is the school headmaster. We believe your son is bringing Cannabis leaves to school, which is highly illegal…”
“It’s a maple leaf you idiot.”
Silence.
“Uh. So it is. Sorry to trouble you. Goodbye”
End of story.
Oohh, “hoax drugs.” Add those to “hoax bombs” and you could literally punish a child for having anything at all. Cardboard box, powdered sugar, modeling clay, water…
They are right to sue in this case, but it highlights the source of the problem. My sister teaches grade school for behavioral disorder kids. Her kids are from predominantly poor families. (Don’t ask me why, I don’t really know)
I wish I could access her post (can’t for some reason; I hate FB), but she had posted on a topic about how schools shouldn’t ban peanuts because of kids with peanut allergies. Her take was, yes, that would be great, and fair and egalitarian, but untenable. The second a child with a peanut allergy gets a little bit sick, the school will be sued. Her school can’t afford that.
Most schools can’t afford to be sued serially, and the richer the kids, the worse the problem becomes because the more parents can afford to bully administrators to garner favor (or eke out revenge, or just grab some quick cash) for their kids.
This is what baffles me, and perhaps I need to educate myself.
Were schools sued more before Zero Tolerance, and Kafkaesque school policies? Rhetorical question: have these policies created a bigger monster than the one they sought to quash?
I honestly don’t have the answers. I am sure one of the more data-minded here does.
I’ve done way worse than this kid, and for the most part got off with less punishment (matched it once for some computer-related tomfoolery). Of course, I’m a white guy, 9/11 was years off, and people weren’t quite so litigious back then.
It would be too simple to blame the lawyers. The litigiousness of our society seems to stem from the idea that the little guy can stand up for himself against the big bullies in society. But, the same framework can be used opportunistically for the purpose of bullying.
Another rhetorical question: Is there a society that has defenses for the little guy, without the corresponding abuse we see here?
Somehow I’m not sure that the issue is that a botanist could tell the difference.
I don’t expect that school administrators to be plant or drug experts so I can sort of see how some idiot could initially make the error. It’s the attitude that backing down from the position - in the face of the fact that it is now clearly a maple leaf - constitutes a loss of face or authority, that is the problem. And in fact this is a general problem in American culture and increasingly the rest of the Western world.
Without more information about the circumstances, I couldn’t say for sure. If the kid had been dealing maple leaves to his more stupid peers, then I would say some form of punishment was in order. However that’s just an example - I have no idea of the exact circumstances.
Here’s an article about a German juvenile prison - in Germany the juvenile criminal law can applied to offenders up to 21 years, in some special cases 23 years, for minor offenders (i.e. younger than 18) it’s the only applicable law.
The whole article series about the German prison system is an intersting read, but read it with a grain of salt: I think the assessment of the system is too positive.
It occurs to me that this is the high-school equivalent of SWATting - use of the overreaction of a hysterical appendage of authority to victimise or coerce. No doubt in this scenario the bully goes unpunished even after their deception is revealed.
One doesn’t have to be a plant expert to apply simple reasoning and skepticism, especially in the face of actual evidence to the contrary of what was initially believed. The cognitive load required in this situation is pretty low.
Having never tried to grow the plant our magnanimous government has deemed illegal, I’m curious…do the leaves wilt pretty quickly after picking the way basil leaves or leaf lettuce can? Because maple leaves don’t wilt very much, even if you pluck them off the tree while still green.
That’s a really interesting question, especially because Japanese maple leaves don’t look like sugar maple leaves. Now I’m wondering if I can remember what they look like when they fall off the tree in late autumn (yeah, they’re late color-turners and thus late-droppers as well).
If I recall correctly, they lie flat on the ground after falling and stay that way. They don’t curl up. But my memory isn’t always scientifically accurate!
Japanese maple leaves? Guess what, and this is totally improbable–im an enthusiast in Japanese maples!
The leaves are as I’m sure you know almost infinitely varied. Neither them nor cannabis leaves wilt like basil. And Japanese maple leaves generally keep their shape after dropping. They do not curl up.
