Your highschool really wasn't THAT bad

[Astrocloud]

April 18, 2004, 1:14AM
Zero tolerance raises alarms
Parents say Katy ISD overdisciplining students for minor offenses
By RACHEL GRAVES
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

KATY -- Bubbly and bright, Jewel Caillet considered herself "Miss Teen Spirit" until she was accused of drinking at a high school football game and subjected to 3 1/2 months in the Katy Independent School District's discipline school.

The 16-year-old says she was not drinking and was refused the opportunity to take a Breathalyzer test. A municipal court judge threw out the charge. But KISD still sent Jewel to the discipline school, where students cannot have a locker or pens because they could be used to hide drugs. Each day, Jewel was required to bare her midriff, ankles and feet for inspections to ensure she was not carrying contraband.

Stories like hers have become increasingly common.


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2511629

[Aletheia]

Zero tolerance doesn't work. I dislike dealing with it.

[Bamrak]

What happened to innocent until proven guilty? I personally disagree with her breathalyser choice if she was not drinking, but she DOES have the right to refuse, and to refuse without repercussions.

I'm glad I'm out of school.

[feelgood]

Another case of people increasing intolerablity...

[sailor]

Ah, our wonderful education system.

Seriously, how did we get so fucked up? People cant see past their own noses, and its showing. Stupid people.

[Ace_O_Spades]

this makes me happy i went to school in a Canadian high school... it was very normal

[Destrox]

What the hell, I graduated from highschool 3 years ago and you almost never saw shit like this going on.

What has happened so fast and big to make this shit so common.

Hell the biggest problem my school had was pot smokers and occasional drinking. Now talking to my buddies little brother, a good 1/3 of the students there are hooked on METH, fucking METH. This is a school where class sizes are 110-130 at most, this would is going to shit faster then You can count to 1.

[Fenton-J-Cool]

In the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Thank god this violent criminal is quarantined.

[animosity]

every day i come closer to moving to canada...

[animosity]

double post... my bad/

[tricks]

Hehe. My Alma Mater. The local police were always that bad too.

[BigGov]

I went to a high school where there was only grades 10-12 in the building, but it still held about 2,000 students on the average year.

For the first two years I attended we had a great principal. Why was he great? Because he gave us all freedom and respect. You have an hour off? Great, do what you want, go to the library, go walk in the halls, hell leave the building, just don't disturb classes, and have common sense.

The summer before my final year this great principal retired. The replacement? A total bitch. Did she give us respect or allow us freedom? Nope. Have a free hour? Sit in commons for attendence. Then, if you have your student ID (used absolutely zero times in my first two years there) you can go to the library, where you can sign in if you show them your ID too. Then, if you want to walk the halls to go to your locker or go to the bathroom, you need a pass.

What happened? The number of students walking in the halls increased 10 fold. A legitamate 10 fold. Teachers had to close the doors to their classrooms because the noise was so distracting. And these fancy regulations? Well, you're working with about 95% of the staff that thinks the new rules are shit. You're working with 100% of the students that think the new rules are shit. The result? The rules were never enforced. The new rules were horribly enforced and since more focus was placed on these new rules, the old ones started to fall away. It got to the point where I would just see how far I could go before getting in trouble. The problem? I didn't. I walked the hallways all year without a pass, was never stopped once. Well, stopped, I had a few teachers talk to me "have a pass?" "nope" "can you come with me?" "nope, I'm going to (fill in important place)" "ok" That was with teachers I didn't know. Teachers I did know wouldn't even consider turning in a student they had. If we weren't doing something important in class and it was worktime or such, I got up and left a couple times. I didn't "sign-out" of class, or the school, I just got my stuff and left. Nothing.

The moral?

If people treat teenagers with respect, they will most likely receive respect and good behavior. If they treat teenagers like underlings it just breeds bad behavior.

[H12]

Originally posted by Jimmy4
I went to a high school where there was only grades 10-12 in the building, but it still held about 2,000 students on the average year.

For the first two years I attended we had a great principal. Why was he great? Because he gave us all freedom and respect. You have an hour off? Great, do what you want, go to the library, go walk in the halls, hell leave the building, just don't disturb classes, and have common sense.

The summer before my final year this great principal retired. The replacement? A total bitch. Did she give us respect or allow us freedom? Nope. Have a free hour? Sit in commons for attendence. Then, if you have your student ID (used absolutely zero times in my first two years there) you can go to the library, where you can sign in if you show them your ID too. Then, if you want to walk the halls to go to your locker or go to the bathroom, you need a pass.

What happened? The number of students walking in the halls increased 10 fold. A legitamate 10 fold. Teachers had to close the doors to their classrooms because the noise was so distracting. And these fancy regulations? Well, you're working with about 95% of the staff that thinks the new rules are shit. You're working with 100% of the students that think the new rules are shit. The result? The rules were never enforced. The new rules were horribly enforced and since more focus was placed on these new rules, the old ones started to fall away. It got to the point where I would just see how far I could go before getting in trouble. The problem? I didn't. I walked the hallways all year without a pass, was never stopped once. Well, stopped, I had a few teachers talk to me "have a pass?" "nope" "can you come with me?" "nope, I'm going to (fill in important place)" "ok" That was with teachers I didn't know. Teachers I did know wouldn't even consider turning in a student they had. If we weren't doing something important in class and it was worktime or such, I got up and left a couple times. I didn't "sign-out" of class, or the school, I just got my stuff and left. Nothing.

The moral?

If people treat teenagers with respect, they will most likely receive respect and good behavior. If they treat teenagers like underlings it just breeds bad behavior.

There are only two things that separates my situation and yours:


1) Our school is 9-12 and only has ABOUT 270 students...yeah, it's a small-town Tennessee public school, what can ya do?

2) I missed the years when the school used to give freedom to those who won't abuse it; instead, now I'm in a school where people do nothing but abuse the rules...and the teachers let them get away with it, too.

[Polyphobic]

I graduated in 1992. Our school was fairly strict. The good thing was the rules were plainly stated and enforced. I can not stand randomly enforced laws and rules and it sounds like this is a fairly common problem nowdays.
My son is 8 months old. I am fearfull of what the public school system will look like when he gets into high school.

[Cynthetiq]

bah. i went to a strict catholic school.

quit your bitching and whining, i did plenty of breakfast club saturday mornings and i wasn't a troublemaker. heck sometimes i even bought breakfast for everyone from McD's.

[rmarshall]

When I was in high school over 30 years ago, we smuggled booze into school dances all the time. It was very educational. For example, I learned not to try to fill a wine sack with beer. I learned if you take an ounce of booze from each of 10 bottles and mix them, it tastes awful! It was better to swipe a bottle and dispose of it: parents never counted their bottles!

[iccky]

We bring up our children in a fascist enviroment.

They will be more likley to submit to a fascist government when they are adults.

Thats what really scares me. We should be training people to be citizens, that you have certain rights along with certain responsibilities (like in H12's story).

Things like this really piss me off.

[Nisses]

Bamrak: she didn't refuse the breathanalyzer... she was refused a breathanalyzer to prove she had not been drinking.

so it's the other way around.

[Strange Famous]

how disgusting, the school board should all be dismissed

[Redgirl]

You know I keep hearing horror stories regarding this zero tolerance shit, and yet it keeps being the policy. When are people going to start acting like they have a mind of their own and start using plain old common sense again? How are these kids ever going to know how to act in the real world if this is the environment they come from? Where thinking is BAD!!!

I truly fear for the future of the human race, people.

[TM875]

On a completely unrelated topic, my highschool is having a book published about it. "A Year in the Life" style.

EVERYBODY:
Go out and buy "Wonderland" by Michael Bramberger starting at the beginning of May.

[Strange Famous]

In fact, I wouldnt mind throwing the school board in jail... strip searching this girl (forcing her to bare her midriff) is a violation of her human rights, she has not been found guilty in a court of law of any crime and they do not have the right to treat her this way -it is child abuse, pure and simple.

if she wants to drink (which there is no proof she did) it is none of the school's business anyway, this is basically the logic of a police state, and it is supposed to be excused because they are only abusing children?

It is no wonder that the youth movement is so filled with anger, it is ironic that the powered classes are arming those who will cosign them and everything they stand for into the dustbin of history when the revolution occurs. More and more it is obvious that society is becoming divided, the master class abuses its power ever more daily, these school children clearly understand that they are nothing more than slaves, and if the system will not support them it must be torn down.

I have been thinking about this article since I read it and it really does make me mad, I hope the school board and this boot camp school is smashed very quickly and the people who organised it are dealt with appropriately

[Lebell]

I've stated elsewhere that Zero Tolerance policies make Zero Sense.

There is NO room for the school admistration to consider the specific circumstances.

That being said, one of the reasons for these policies is the sue happy nature of our society, where schools are getting sued because little Bobby/Jamal/Ashley/whoever wasn't made Valedictorian.

We are reaping what we have sown.

[DelayedReaction]

Except that this is the kind of thing that SHOULD require legal action, since her rights were pretty much shoved out the window.

Incidentally, that's pretty much how high school is. You have no rights, and the state wants to keep it that way. Why? Because the goal of primary and secondary school is not to provide you with an education; the goal is to indoctrinate social norms and provide basic knowledge skills to survive in the real world. College is where education begins; not secondary school.

That said, the fact that the parents haven't done anything is disconcerting, or at least the article doesn't mention much. THIS part makes me sick...

Parents in Katy cannot appeal decisions to send their children to the discipline school for periods of 60 days or fewer. District officials say the children who go through the school, named Opportunity Awareness Center, have access to better resources, including small classes, counselors and social workers.

"They leave here better for it," said Patty Bing, principal of the discipline school. "I've never seen a situation where a child did not benefit."

But students have nicknamed the Opportunity Awareness Center "A-School" because the classes are so easy.

Jewel, now back at Taylor High School, has a harsher assessment.

"At A-School, you knew you were in prison," she said, adding that the experience made her hate school even at Taylor.

The entrance to the discipline school is monitored by a security guard and blocked by a metal detector, where the students line up every morning to be searched before they can enter. Bing and other faculty members greet the students as they lift up their shirts and pants, empty their pockets and take off their shoes.

"We make it a very positive experience to start the day," the principal said.

Children can be pulled out for TWO MONTHS and subjected to Orweillian conditions without appeal? I find that to be atrocious.

[rmarshall]

My friend's 15 year old boy was suspended for two weeks for threatening to beat up a kid. The so-called "zero tolerance" policy.

The kid he threatened to beat up was harrassing a girl and so was "threatened". My friend's boy did the right thing and said to him "leave her alone or I'll beat the shit out of you". The kid squealed and my friend's boy was suspended.

What's going to happen if schoolyard justice is disallowed? What would happen to our heros like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood if they had the "zero tolerance" policy when they grew up?

[hulk]

My God. I am fucking glad I didn't get educated in the US. Every day I read about stuff like this, and am baffled as to how it got that bad. High school was awesome for me, the teachers respected us (mostly) and they got respect back (mostly). This incident has just left me speechless. Fsdfghjkladfsghjs. There - wordless frustration.

[aurigus]

It seems like this Zero tolerance thing has been a trend since I left high school in 1998. Maybe I could see it starting around 1997, but its gotten worse. My little bro has to have a clear backpack at school, cause they say you can hide weapons in backpacks. Duh.

When you're that age, one of the worst things you can do it tell your kids you don't trust them. Basically, in this new zero-tolerance non-trusting school you're doing just that. We are in for some big problems in the upcoming years, from a disallusioned youth!