A girl arrested after writing on a desk opens the eyes of some to the extremism also known as zero tolerance.
On Feb. 1, Alexa Gonzalez, an 12-year-old student at Junior High School in Forest Hills, N.Y., was placed in handcuffs and hauled off to the police station after writing a message on her desk in green marker. Although I am not justifying what she did (I have worked as a janitor at both an elementary school and high school, and I know how hard it is to remove graffiti from desks and walls), I find it a little harsh to call in the local police over such a minor infraction. But, as both a reporter and parent, I see this type of reaction more and more from school districts.
At my daughter’s high school, students are fined up to $300 if they get into a fight. Once again, I understand how violence has become more and more of an issue for school districts, and I want my children to feel safe at their schools, but isn’t $300 a little extreme? In one case at my daughter’s school, a friend of hers was pushed during a game of basketball, so he decided to push back. For such a minor incident, he was slapped with a $300 ticket. I remember getting into fights at a young age much more serious than a shoving match, and there were no fines passed out, and the SWAT team wasn’t called in to break up the fight.
Remember, being proactive doens’t mean you have to be over-reactive…
