Fruitport schools fourth-grader expelled for having cake knife

[The Straight Story]

Fruitport schools fourth-grader expelled for having cake knife


FRUITPORT -- A fourth-grader was expelled Monday by the Fruitport school board.

School officials said that two months ago, the 9-year-old boy brought a "wedding cake knife" aboard a school bus. Other students told the bus driver and the principal, who handled the situation "within minutes," according to Superintendent Nicholas Ceglarek.

The student has not returned to school since that day. The boy will not be able to return for 90 days, and even then, school board action to reinstate him is required. Middle and high school students may be expelled for up to 180 days.

Ceglarek said the child did not express that he intended to use the knife for malicious reasons.

http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2009/01/fruitport_schools_fourthgrader.html

[NightWatcher]

1. a knife is a knife is a knife. It's dumb but we must live by their "zero tolerance" rules

as long as you go to their school, you have got to follow their rules.

[orleans]

5. uh huh. my daughter's high school had a "zero tolerance" bullshit policy too

but apparently it didn't apply to anyone in an art class--the one i had to buy her was more wicked than this one:

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[backscatter712]

10. Zero-tolerance is a crock of shit.

Time to put some financial incentives in place - if a school district wants financial aid from the .gov, it needs to lose zero-tolerance.

[Posteritatis]

13. I endorse this product and/or service (nt)

[elleng]

15. How about it needs to gain

JUDGMENT!

Didn't any of these idiots ever hear of 'prosecutorial discretion?' Probably not.

[Ilsa]

16. Why are school administrators paid so much

not to exercise judgement? Any idiot can enforce a stupid rule, but it takes someone with judgement and maturity to rationally and FAIRLY enforce rules, and hence earn a bigger paycheck.

[Posteritatis]

17. The guiding light of all large organizations: unreasoning terror of lawsuits (nt)

[Ilsa]

18. That's where maturity and fairness enter the picture. Be certain that

others of different socio-economic-ethinic backgrounds are treated the same fir the same offense, but giving consideration for the details of the offense. Yeah, the lawsuits might still creep up, but hopefully, the facts will make the difference.

[Posteritatis]

19. Oh, I agree

I hate the attitude towards lawsuits. Between stupidly risk-averse organizations and the whole "accusation equals guilty" mindset, schools have taken to bending over backwards to ridiculous extremes to eliminate even the vague hints of possibilities of anything anyone could take issue with. The facts don't make a difference with media coverage, so schools simply choose to ignore them altogether with this zero-thought stuff.

I might be bitter. Then again, I went to a high school where it was an expellable offense to be attacked.

[nichomachus]

2. Is the implication that

because it's a "cake knife" it couldn't be used as a weapon?


Man stabbed with baby’s cake knife

Nov 28 2007 Western Mail

A MAN charged with murdering a Polish man by stabbing him on a Wrexham street had used a knife which had been loaned to cut his baby’s christening cake, a court heard yesterday.

Thomas Blue, 25, travelled from Glasgow for the christening. Mold Crown Court was told the knife used to stab 24-year-old Adam Michalski four times – the fatal blow piercing the heart – had been lent to his girlfriend by her mother to cut the christening cake.

Blue, of Balornoch, Glasgow, but who was staying with his then partner in Bury Street, Wrexham, denies murder, claiming he was defending himself. The trial continues.

[The Straight Story]

3. I would use a pencil or pen

:)

[nichomachus]

4. Ot just a shiv

I whittled from my mother's sugar cookies.

What gets my goat is that stories like this are meant to ridicule the authorities by referring to it as a "cake knife," as if that makes it OK. The kid brought a freaking knife on the bus. Period. What type of knife is irrelevant. Calling it a cake knife just rattles the cages of the ignoramuses.

[orleans]

6. maybe it was simply a "home-ec" tool, likened to art supplies

(see my above post)

[Posteritatis]

7. Kids get expelled for those plastic takeout-place butterknife things too

I'd say what type of knife it is is somewhat relevant, considering some of the ridiculous "weapons" kids get nailed for these days. My personal favorite is the expulsions for those 5mm-long GI Joe toy guns under "firearms" rules, but banning a kid from the school for a glorified spatula is kind of up there.

But of course, we can't have things like facts or context or whatnot get in the way of Thinking Of The Children, an action which these days is antithetical to thinking at all, can we?

[ieoeja]

14. If he stabbed someone with it, it wasn't a cake knife.

Using a knife to cut a cake does not make that knife a cake knife. To borrow from Posteritatis' post, a cake knife is basically a spatula that comes to a point.

A cake knife widens dramatically and is not sharp enough to cut flesh. The point could stab with enough force behind it, but you'd not go in very far as it widens too much too quickly.

[JayMusgrove]

8. I agree ANY knife is inapproprate on a school bus, but

why suspension or expulsion for this? How about a few weeks of serious one-on-one intervention with counseling, etc for months... and back in school within a week or so. To put this child months behind in his schooling seems a little extreme for such a mistake.

There must be more behind this story we do not know.

[Posteritatis]

12. It's just a zero-tolerance policy; most of those are intrinsically stupid

Kids have gotten far worse punishments for far less. This one's in the middle of the pack for ridiculousness.

I don't see why even counseling would be necessary in all of these situations, anyway. We're already too far into the territory of assuming any kid who does anything even slightly out of the ordinary must have a psychiatric problem, and "a few weeks of serious intervention" over bringing a utensil to school strikes me as overkill.

[immoderate]

9. Did he have a cake?

--imm

[The Straight Story]

11. No, I think he was hunting one :) (nt)