Talk about zero tolerance!
A second-grader in Cape May County in New Jersey was suspended from school one day for drawing a stick figure aiming a gun at another stick figure.
Seven-year-old Kyle Walker told his mother the gun was a water pistol, according to the Atlantic City Press.
Apparently, the youth had given the picture to a friend on the school bus. That friend showed his parents, who contacted school officials.
This isn’t the first time “zero tolerance policy” was enforced to the extreme. In 2000, four kindergarten boys in New Jersey were suspended for playing “cops and robbers” while using their fingers as guns.
In this incident, the boy’s mother -- Shirley McDevitt -- is confused by the policy. "Are they abusing the zero-tolerance law? What I'm told is, ‘It's the time we live in.’ Is it the time we live in when a little boy can't draw a picture?"
The sketch depicted a stick figure with a smiley face shooting another stick figure with a smiley face. One figure was named, “Me,” and the other, “David,” according to television station NBC10.com in Philadelphia.
McDevitt said she wants the incident removed from her son's record and insisted her son doesn’t have a problem with “David.” She also wants to talk to school officials about the application of zero-tolerance policies.
The school district’s statement read: "It is the position of the Dennis Township Board of Education to protect and preserve the confidentiality rights of all of our public school students in the Township of Dennis. These rights are afforded to school children under federal and state statutes. Therefore, the district believes any discussion regarding students or student matters will violate those statutory rights. This would be to the detriment of not only this child, but all school children in the state of New Jersey."
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