Bad Equation: Zero Tolerance=Zero Common Sense

Little six-year-old Zachary Christie did something that many a person bigger and more powerful than he could not accomplish... he got The New York Times and Fox News on the same side of an issue.

Little Zachary was excited about becoming a cub scout and proud of his new Boy Scout camping utensil that contained a fork, spoon and knife. His only thought was eating his lunch with it and perhaps showing it off to his friends. But, unintentionally, he broke the No Tolerance rule on bringing weapons to school and the Christina School District in Newark, Del., suspended the first grader and ordered him to attend the district's reform school for 45 days.

Fortunately, for all concerned, (especially Zachary) the Christina School District reviewed the situation and let Good Common Sense enter the equation making the punishment more sensible for Zachary and any youngster in the future that commits a similarly foolish, but harmless transgression.

However, a 17-year-old Eagle Scout has also recently fallen victim to a severe shortage of Common Sense by the Lansingburgh School District and Superintendent George Goodwin. Matthew Whalen's dreams of attending the US Military Academy is in jeopardy due to his month long suspension for keeping a survival kit locked in the trunk of his car.
Whalen, a senior, says he stocks his car with a sleeping bag, water, a ready-to-eat meal and the small knife, which was given to him by his grandfather, a police chief in a nearby town.

But Lansingburgh High has a zero-tolerance policy for weapons, and when school officials discovered that Whalen kept his knife locked in his car, he says, they suspended him for five days — and then tacked on an additional 15 after a hearing. Yet the knife is not even considered a weapon by the New York State Education Department — definitions and punishments are left up to local school boards.

Obviously, not all school boards can be counted upon to display a modicum of common sense. Zero Tolerance cannot be tolerated if it continues to cause unreasonable harm to young folk that have no harmful intent.
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,566182,00.html?test=latestnews