Zero-Candy Policies

The BBQ Pit
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Faint tangent here:

*Marysville: Students in walk-out disciplined

MARYSVILLE, WA – Totem Middle School students who participated in a walk-out Wednesday can either attend a forum on Friday or face a one-day suspension for skipping class.

Friday is a day off for students in the Marysville School District, but staff at Totem have agreed to meet with students to discuss violence and discipline. During this week’s protest, students demanded tougher punishments for fighting and drug use.

“We hope ideas can emerge from those discussions that make Totem safer,” said Gail Miller, assistant superintendent of the Marysville School District.

The forum is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the school.*

My nephew was one of the students who walked out and is now being disciplined for - well, I’m still trying to figure out, for what.

Apparently, there are multiple fights at the school on any given day, and a big one at least once a week. A boy brought a plastic water-bottle to school with him, but it was full of vodka that he passed around to his friends. And there are other drugs, like marijuana. The offenders have been caught, but have only been getting 3-day suspensions instead of the 3-week suspensions the student handbook proscribes.

So, the students walked out, and are now being punished. I think today was the detention day actually, since it was supposed to be a day off school, and the kids had to come in and be punished by sitting detention instead. A lot of parents went in to sit the detention with their children, or had to drive them to school because, it not being a school day, the busses weren’t running (and a lot had to take time off work to do this), and it’s generally made a LOT of people angry. Why? Not because the school overdid the punishment, but because it wasn’t even keeping its own very reasonable policies regarding violence and drugs.

Oh yes. And the school refused to permit parents to call in, post facto, to excuse their childrens’ absences from classes during the walkout. Because it wasn’t a valid reason to be out of class.

I’m sorry. I think this is simply and inexcusably stupid. Like all the other inexcusably chickenshit bully policies of infallibility, beyond any consideration of saying “We’re sorry, we’ve been wrong, what can we do to make this right”.

I’d like to think these children will learn about democracy in action. I’m afraid what they’ll learn is that you can’t fight city hall.

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Or that civil disobedience means you freely accept the consequences of breaking the rules to bring attention to the issue. Rosa Parks accepted being arrested and going to jail because the issue of equal rights for black people made it into the newspapers as a result. It didn’t get her a better seat immediately, but it raised awareness of the problem that eventually was solved through legal and peaceful channels.

I’m a little hazy as to what the problem is, actually. IIUC, the school is requiring all the students who ditched in “protest” to come to a forum to discuss the issue. Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that what the students wanted - a chance to be heard? Seems to me they’ve learned that peaceful protest DOES work. Additionally, I think requiring attendance at that discussion forum does a good thing - it separates the wheat from the chaff. Those students that seriously want to be heard and want something done will be there; those who just wanted an extra day off school won’t. Why should the second group be forgiven under the same umbrella as the first?

And why on earth *should *the parents be allowed to excuse them against school policy? Excused absences are pretty well laid out in our school’s handbook - illness, doctor’s appointments and funerals are about it. The attendance people might also let you slide with a planned vacation, but honestly I think that’s because it’s just easier to enter an excused absence into the system - according to our school policies, vacations are not excused absences. Planned insurrection is certainly not an excused absence!

There’s a difference between a whiner and a political crusader. I’m glad the school gets that, since it seems the parents don’t.

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I guess that makes sense, for example my (magnet) middle school was for “fine and performing arts” but also had a focus on humanities/language arts + classes. It wasn’t quite the elitist academic snob school, but definately had a “we’re better than you in both fine arts AND academics except for the two of you that don’t spread your focus” air.

The reason I wondered about deseg orders is mainly because I was in the school’s regular disctrict (meaning it was my natural shcool) and lived about 30-40 minutes away. But how you guys explained magnet would also help explain why they have commercials… which I am ashamed to admit I may have started the trend of four years ago (I learned how to use chroma key and the editing devices and it went downhill from there). :confused:

Out of wonder the (public) High School I go to I needed to test in, however there is no “district” it has, there are no “natural” students, it is a 100% test in school. It technically falls under (or fell under when first made) “Special Education” (they take the top 3% as specified in some various opinions/laws and was created partially to prevent “white flight” after Brown v Board of Education and such, long story especially for this school district). But I have to wonder does this qualify as a “magnet school” in definition or is it something else entirely (i.e. “Special Needs”)?

In my districts handbook pretty much anything barring “I didn’t feel like coming” is excused, I think they actually may have a special tag for “politically oriented protest.” :wink:

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Desegregation orders have nothing to do with “magnet school” status. I went to a middle school in a predominantly white/Japanese neighborhood that bussed a lot of kids in from predominantly Mexican neighborhoods, but it wasn’t a magnet school. (Actually, the school I mentioned earlier, my current employer, probably isn’t technically a “magnet school” either–they’re a charter school–but in their case it’s basically the same thing, only more so.)

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Depends on how your district defines it, but generally a magnet school is one that is test-in (aka “selective enrollment”) which provides a specialized curriculum with fairly “traditional” teaching methods, but some flexibility at the school level. They almost always have to test like the other schools in the district and are held to the same standards as they.

A charter school is a school with a great deal of autonomous freedom. Not only the focus (“math and science” or “film and theater” or something else), but the pedagogy, teaching methods, schedules, testing and grading systems and classroom structure might be radically different than other “regular” schools in the district. Often they are treated as “experimental” and thrust through loopholes to escape otherwise mandated standardized testing.

Yeah, that sounds like a magnet school. :wink:

I went and looked up our absenteeism policy, just out of curiosity:

Yeah, no way. Rosa Parks herself would have been in detention for that kind of absence.

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I see. We haven’t really be called a magnet school but we possibly fit the bill.

Here’s some history because I can (you probably know a lot about the general ideas and effects over the COUNTRY but I’m giving some specifics for this town):

Basically my school district immediately desegregated after Brown v Board of Education II (most didn’t of course). Tucson, however is pretty much a segregated city the poorer and mostly minority (mainly hispanic) areas are soutwest and it gets more rich and white as you get northeast. Because of this after Swann v Carloette Mckenberg we got slapped with a desegregation order and had to do the bussing plans and such. Yay.

Well, racism or not noone wanted to be bussed cross-town for 45 minutes so the richer folk that could, left for (and founded) other districts (which are now the "richie rich areas of town). This happened all over and is commonly known as “white flight.” Well, of course this pissed off the district a bit I mean every one of us has a tag for district funding on our head and they were losing money FAST, so two people (teachers I think but they may have been board members) founded something called “Special Projects.” It was a project at one of the high schools in the poorer areas of town in which they worked to curve this. Since the district gets special funding to accomodate the “needs of special education” (meaning the top and bottom 3% of the intelligence bracked) and they could keep the rich, white, and (typically, due to money and mroe tutoring access etc) smarter folk in the district. Well, of course sicne it was a project at a highs chool and the project was nearly 100% white they started arguing the classes held made the school it was at a segregated school. Lawsuit time… wait no!

Lawsuit dodge time! they made it a SEPERATE school and took it from the poorer area of town into the smack dab middle intersection between “poorer” and “richer.” (So that you weren’t having rooms full of hispanics and then BOOM white classroom, and it was more equal looking and of course we have a good race distribution now) We share the campus with another school still though. Our school has no fine arts so we take the other school’s classes and we share sports and clubs, though they’re predominately my school (even though the other school is like 3 times bigger than us in population and has less homework, go figure). Eventually the name got changed to get out of the elitism argument against us. I heard we technically can, as (somehow after 50 years) we are still an “experiment”, opt out of many tests, but we take them to get us extra funding and to prove how smart we are (in fact they force us to take tests most other public schools choose to opt out of or make voluntary on a student by student basis).

But either way we’ve never been called a magnet school, we do seem to fit your description somewhat though.

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Let me get this straight: the kids missed a day of school, so their punishment is (wait for it…) missing another day of school. On what planet is this an appropriate solution?

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Mmmno. The kids had to come in an extra day and sit around doing (presumably) nothing, as punishment, on a day when there wasn’t going to be any school anyway.

I’ve not yet figured out how using school as punishment is helpful, but I’m not sure logic is really at work here.

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No, no. Read what I quoted. The kids could either attend the forum or face a one-day suspension for skipping class. One punishment for skipping a day of school was to miss another day of school.

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There’s a big difference between walking out and “skipping a day of school”.

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Meh. It’s all terminology. You can skip school for a good reason or a bad reason or no reason at all. Unless the school sanctioned it, you are (by the definition I use) “skipping a day of school.” My question is this:

(a) The students (for whatever reason) missed their classes for a day

(b) The school is punishing them by forcing them to miss their classes for another day

How does this make sense?

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Is it an in-school suspension or off-campus suspension? For the former, the kids attend school but are marked “absent” (with an asterisk), It’s a paperwork and reporting issue. Not at all unusual. If they don’t show up for their on-campus, then it escalates.

At least, that’s how it is at my school.

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Hi guys,

The magnet schools in Connecticut are public schools with the students chosen by a lottery system, the majority of the spots going to kids in the town. They do, however, take kids from the surrounding towns as well. Some have neighborhood or sibling preference (if you live nearby or have a sibling, you get in) but others don’t. They are specialized towards various things. Sheriden is a technology & Communications school, which I think is geared towards computers. There is an Arts one (where my child goes), and ones for Science, Global Studies, Math, even college prep, just to name some of them. Pretty much anything you can think of.

They work by taking the regular 7 period day and having 6 regular periods, teaching the required curriculum and the 7th class is geared towards their specialty. The various schools go from K-12.

Oh, aside from applying, you can go graduate from one school to another in the same type. You still have to apply, but it is almost a given that you get in, unless you have behavioral problems.

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This is, I suppose, the difference between what the newspaper says, and what my mother-in-law told me about the situation on the ground, as it were. They can’t both be right, but either of them could as easily be mistaken on the details. Newspaper articles are, I find, quite often wrong on details. MIL used the word ‘detention’ many times, and ‘forum’ not once.

Anyway, I still think it’s messed up. The children have been asking and asking for more security on campus, and for the troublemakers to face their appropriate punishments. This has not happened. So they finally walk out in protest, and will be punished for it. And I am not convinced yet that the security situation will be improved.

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I love your username.

I used to hustle candy in my school and they’re right to ban it. I would buy $5 worth from the corner store before school started, and sell it for $15 over the day. It may not be worth the punishment, but it’s surely a scam that is rightly eliminated by a watchful tyrant.

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UPDATE

The expected school retraction has occurred.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/03/13/skittles.suspension.ap/index.html

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In our high school, we weren’t allowed to have the pop machine turned on until after lunch. We just had a juice drink machine. (Which probably had just as much, if not more, sugar than the pop).

As for what catsix is saying, I’d carry ibuprophen (I think I did, can’t remember), because if you went to the nurse for one, because she was really, really old, and extremely suspicious if you asked for a pain killer. She was so old that if you asked her for a pad, she’d give you one of those old ones that you had to PIN on, rather than the ones with adhesives. My dad said she was old when he was there.

Hell, even my American History teacher used to bitch about her.