I’m terribly confused.
Even if she was using her wet pants as a form of taunting to the teacher - why the HELL does that warrant a call to the police? That warrants something like detention, or maybe in-school suspension. That was an excellent waste of taxpayer’s money, there.
~Tasha
Where did you find that info? I didn’t see it in the linked articles.
Ha.
Second article, kam
Maybe they called the cops to “document” the incident and to witness how they dealt with it. I could certainly see that. Everyone is so quick to sue when things get unpleasant. The school probably didn’t want to leave anything open to interpretation.
Paul, I agree that calling the police seems like too much. I would think a call to the parents to come pick up the child should be enough.
Even with the more detailed article I found, we still know very little. Maybe they have tried *‘the come and get her’ * tactic with the Mom and the Mom has not cooperated. The girl did not pee in her pants until after she was already causing a disturbance. It is possible that the school administration has exhausted its options with this family. We do not know. Of course it could also be a lazy school admin who is doing a lousy job or somewhere in between.
Jim
The disorderly conduct charges have been dropped.
Urinating in a public place is a crime, ya know.
Even for 12 year olds.
But the school should have dealt with it.
Hmm. Another case of a school infringing on a student’s freedom of expression.
More seriously, I’m kind of concerned that a school that is apparently not only trusted but funded to maintain special education programs is so ill-equipped to deal with an unpleasant but hardly uncommon occurence like inappropriate micturation, planned or not. I’m also kind of taken aback by the fact that, if you take the media reports at their word, the girl is claimed to have assaulted staff in the past (without, apparently, police involvement), but wetting her pants (she did not, apparently, become violent on this occasion) was somehow beyond the pale. I don’t much like the school laying off the responsibilty for it’s actions by consulting the kid’s parents, either. It’s the kind of thing that’s appropriate after the situation is resolved, maybe, a week later when you all meet somewhere and decide if and what kind of punishment is appropriate. But if the situation is dire and dangerous enough to call the cops at all, what the hell are they doing asking the parents (who aren’t even there) for permission first? It’s also disquieting that, once her response to the appearance of a principal involved losing control of her bladder, the appropriate response was to bring in another authority figure, one whom (a)she did not know and who (b)was armed with a club and a gun.
Oh, and another thing – nothing to do with the thread, really, but I’m on a roll: I’m sick and tired of schools trying to pass off as “learning experiences” the foisting of drudge work – be it meal preparation and clean-up, test grading, administrative filing, assistant teaching – on twelve-year olds, who still haven’t learned their geography, or gotten a sniff of instruction in a second language, or art, or even the 3 R’s to the degree that a decent prep school would accept.
So there. Grr. So says the dad of a child who, in kindergarten, once peed on a guidance counselor, either on purpose or not.
[Stewie Griffin] I’m going to crap double for you tonight [Stewie Griffin]
:eek: I’m glad the fuzz weren’t around when I peed myself from laughter that time…
Second linked article:
What is a ‘special education student’? This has to be a euphemism for something.
My understanding is that it can be a catchall for poor students, student with learning disabilities and student that are such a constant source of trouble that they get classified as a ‘special education student’ to prevent them from disrupting classes. Of course I am basing this on when I was in school which was over twenty years ago.
Jim
In the US a ‘special education student’ almost always refers to a student that has some form of learning disability severe enough that they in separate classes from the main students at least some of the time.
The ones that take the short bus to school
I had a completely different interpretation of what happened from how I read the article:[ul]
[li]Unruly 12-year-old acts up, receives standard punishments.[/li][li]Unruly 12-year-old continues to act up, gets removed from class and placed in special ed.[/li][li]Unruly 12-year-old develops confrontational relationship with angry principal.[/li][li]Unruly 12-year-old continues to act up, angry principal runs out of disciplinary action, organizes conference with parents.[/li][li]Angry principal and parents come to an agreement that it is a “good” idea to “scare” her about her future by calling the cops next time she gets out of hand.[/li][li]Unruly 12-year-old acts up again.[/li][li]Angry principal gives fire and brimstone lecture about calling the police and sending her to jail.[/li][li]Unruly 12-year-old gets scared and pees her pants.[/li][li]Angry principal, because he’s angry, assumes she did it on purpose.[/li][li]Cops arrive. Angry principal allows them to run amok with charges because of his assumption that she did it on purpose.[/li][li]Parents regret their agreement with the school[/li][li]School bends under pressure of bad press and drops charges[/li][li]Unruly 12-year-old continues to act up…[/li][/ul]
I don’t doubt that the kid may have peed herself before because a principal who would think its a good idea to scare a 12-year-old with jail time, could probably scare her pretty well other times. Not to mention, the mother claims she had wet herself before, but there’s no denial from the school against that. Bottom line, it sounds like the kid was a trouble maker, the principal goes a little overboard with his approach, and the parents have no idea how to discipline their daughter. I can very much imagine this kind of approach sounding like a good idea to desperate staff and parents, so it seems more reasonable to me that they would summon the police as a scare tactic than to simply press charges.
Possible, I suppose. I read this: “Duckworth said the decision to call police was made in consultation with the girl’s parents…” to mean that the immediate decision included the parents’ participation, not that there had been a past consultation and agreement as to a plan of action which the school later followed, (and if that were the case wouldn’t there have been a written agreement that the principal could wave at the reporters?) but I admit that the information in the article leaves room for your reading too. I’m not sure that the school looks much better even from your viewpoint, but you certainly may be correct.
I’d be interested to know how the average cop feels about being used this way, as a means of frightening obstreperous, disobedient, unruly and even infuriating, but hardly criminal, children. It opens them up to lawsuits too, of course, but even apart from that, there’s (a) in an elementary or middle school, if you’re tasked with arresting kids for “disorderly conduct,” exactly when do you stop?, and (b) how do you feel about serving a community that, to make up for their own lack of authority over their children, encourages them to fear and hate policemen?, and (c) when is it ever a good idea to arrest anyone if there’s no intent to press charges or eliminate a real danger, but simply to scare someone into better behavior?
[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
[li]Unruly 12-year-old continues to act up, gets removed from class and placed in special ed.[/li][/QUOTE]
Huh? I don’t think you can just place a child in special ed as punishment, or on a whim!
Don’t they have special classes for children with behavioral problems? I thought they did.