'Zero tolerance' policies do lasting damage When a second teenager committed suicide after being suspended from school within two years, Fairfax County supervisors unanimously decided to step in and question public school officials about their "zero tolerance" disciplinary policies. Such an outside review is long overdue.
On Jan. 20, 15-year-old W.T. Woodson High School football player Nick Stuban committed suicide after being suspended and recommended for expulsion for purchasing a legal substance that mimicked the effects of marijuana. In March 2009, Josh Anderson, a 17-year-old football player at South Lakes High School, killed himself two days before his second disciplinary hearing for smoking marijuana.
Fairfax County School Superintendent Jack Dale denies his school system enforces a "zero tolerance" policy, insisting that all 683 students recommended for expulsion were considered on an individual, case-by-case basis. But the harsh punishment Stuban received was far out of proportion to his first offense - particularly since no controlled substances were ever found on him or his belongings. The emotional trauma of having to perform tracheal suctioning on his mother, who is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease, should also have been taken into account.
Yet if Stuban had come to school drunk or high on hard-core drugs such as cocaine or Ecstasy, he would have only faced a minor five- to 10-day suspension with no threat of expulsion, according to Fairfax County Public Schools' Student Responsibilities and Rights handbook.
"Zero tolerance" is not limited to FCPS. Fourteen-year-old Andrew Mikel, an honor student at Spotsylvania High School, was expelled in December for using a "weapon" -- a plastic pen casing -- to blow small plastic pellets at his classmates during lunch period. Elementary school students have been treated like criminals for bringing butter knives to school, or -- horrors -- "assaulting" fellow students with spitballs. The unbending rigidity of such mindless policies, which have been condemned by the American Bar Association and the National Association of School Psychologists, is precisely what makes them inappropriate in an educational setting. Suspending wayward teens without solving their underlying problems merely increases the chances they will drop out of school altogether and enter the criminal justice system.
The law has long made allowances for youthful indiscretions because it correctly recognizes that immature youngsters are not in full control of their impulses, a fact substantiated by scientific research. That doesn't mean students should be allowed to get away with violating school rules. But the punishment should fit the crime -- and the child.
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