School suspends student for taking cell phone call from soldier dad serving in Iraq because phone rang when he was in class.
Discuss Add this link to... Bury
Discuss Add this link to... Bury
Groxx -- a play on \It Rocks!\ and \I Grok\ -- is a link sharing and voting site on the theme of \weird\ news.
Comments
Once again Zero Tolerance at its Best!
Is there any reason to hope that these pin-head school administrators will ever start thinking before they act?
Sadly I do not think so.
Why should the school have the power to stop ANY parent from talking to their child? I can see friends or even other family memebers, but parents should ALWAYS be able to contact their child.
They're Not stopping the child from talking to his parents, just enforcing the consequences of Cell-phone use in class, regardless of circumstances or situation. No doubt they'd also suspend the kid who dialed 911 when a gunman came rampaging through the school.
In the linked article it does appear that this is a perfect example of ZT at it's best, but according to this story (http://www.kdhnews.com/news/story.aspx?s=24674) Brandon had already received a three-day, in-school suspension earlier that day after replying to a text message sent by a friend.
That article also states that "The same day..Patricia Hill sent an instant message to her husband.....saying that his son needed to talk to him", which makes it appear that the original article may have exaggerated when the stated that "The Copperas Cove High School sophomore received an URGENT call from his father"
As a military retiree, I am aware that Msgt Hill probably didn't have time to stay on the phone long enough to go through the proper channel of calling the school office and waiting for Brandon to be called from class and come to the office to take the call. As a mother and veteran of Desert Storm, I also understand what it is like to be separated from your family and to receive a message that your child needs to talk to you.
However, this comment "Then, after hearing that Saxenian would get back to her, the same day of the offense, Patricia Hill called KXXV Channel 25, which reported the second suspension April 4. Information about the first suspension Brandon received was not included either in media reports" in the Killeen Daily Herald, makes me suspect that this was all a set-up to see what the school would do and that the Hill family was just looking for their '15 minutes of fame'.
If Mrs. Hill had been told that the principal would get back to her, why didn't she wait (at least 24 hours) before calling the TV station? Why didn't she tell the reporters that she had asked her husband to call Brandon? and why didn't she tell them that Brandon had already been disciplined, that morning, for inappropriate use of a cell phone?