On The Front Lines

In Testimony Before Maryland Senate, Rutherford Institute Cites Need for Legislative Action to Counter Overreaching School Zero Tolerance Policies

ANNAPOLIS, Md. —  In testimony before the Maryland Senate Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee, constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead vouched for the need for legislation such as The Reasonable School Discipline Act of 2013 (SB 1058), introduced by Senator J.B. Jennings, which aims to establish straightforward guidelines for meting out discipline appropriate to an infraction without overreacting or unnecessarily and permanently marring a student’s academic record. The Rutherford Institute has been at the forefront of an ongoing effort to defend young people victimized by overzealous zero tolerance policies in the public schools, having intervened in hundreds of cases involving young people who were suspended, expelled, and even arrested for violating school zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior and punish all offenses severely, no matter how minor or non-threatening the so-called infraction may have been. In many cases, the offense is nothing more than students playing cops and robbers on the playground, drawing pictures of soldiers, and writing ghoulish creative stories.

“Whereas in the past minor behavioral infractions at school such as shooting spitwads may have warranted a trip to the principal’s office, in-school detention or a phone call to one’s parents, today, they are elevated to the level of criminal behavior with all that implies. Consequently, young people are now being forcibly removed by police officers from the classroom, strip searched, arrested, handcuffed, transported in the back of police squad cars, and placed in police holding cells,” said Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “Unfortunately, with each school shooting, the climate of intolerance for ‘childish’ behavior such as getting into food fights, playing tag, doodling, hugging, kicking, and throwing temper tantrums only intensifies. And as surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs and strip searches become the norm in elementary, middle and high schools across the nation, the punishments being meted out grow ever harsher.”

In calling on the Maryland legislature to lead the way in setting an example for other state legislatures and educational bodies to follow when it comes to distinguishing between behavior in the schools that is merely childish and nonthreatening versus behavior that is violent and poses a clear danger, Whitehead documents the growing problem posed by school officials doling out increasingly harsh punishments and investigative tactics on young people for engaging in childish behavior or for daring to challenge their authority. In two separate incidents in Maryland elementary schools, for example, students were suspended for playing cops and robbers on the school playground. In another outrageous instance, a 9-year-old was threatened with suspension for bringing a Lego policeman with a 2-inch toy gun to school. In North Carolina, a 10-year-old boy was subjected to a strip-search after he was accused of stealing a $20 bill lost by another student.

Other cases include school officials expelling a 6-year-old girl for bringing a plastic toy gun to school, issuing a disciplinary warning to a 5-year-old boy who brought a toy gun built out of Legos to class, and expelling a fifth-grade girl who had a “paper” gun with her in class. “These incidents, while appalling,” notes Whitehead, “are the byproducts of an age that values security over freedom, where police have relatively limitless powers to search individuals and homes by virtue of their badge, and where the Constitution is increasingly treated as a historic relic rather than a bulwark against government abuses.” Whitehead concluded his remarks by noting that if adopted, SB 1058 will be a positive first step in pushing back against the tyranny of zero tolerance policies in the nation’s schools by excluding childish behavior from punishment while also targeting malicious intention as the crucial factor in determining appropriate discipline.