Expulsion

I completely understand your concerns, I do. My biggest issue here in NEPA is with the "No Child Left Behind" Act, which seems to be slowly but surely destroying the education system of this nation by forcing districts to teach to one, standardized test, rather than to a curriculum.

However, I would ask this one question of you:

Not knowing the laws of the State of Nevada, what would YOU do if it was your child that was facing the prospect of expulsion? I'm not defending the behavior you described from the offending child, but there is the possibility that the child was acting in a singular, not general, pattern. Is it fair that the child be expelled from the general education system of your district because of this? Could it be that the principal and vice principal might have been able to provide some kind of professional help for the child, or perhaps a specialized education plan that is better equipped to assist a child showing singular pattern aberrant behavior?

I am quite serious here, and would love to discuss how this could be addressed. Think of it as a "plank" in your future Presidential platform. How will candidate Moore address issues of education to the American public? In a society where Wii and Cartoon Network fill the roll of the more dated and traditional "nanny" in so many homes, is it not surprising that socially acceptable behavior is harder and harder to find?

I, too, find myself in a tough spot. My future son has just completed an "in-school" suspension for referring to a fellow classmate of Hispanic origins in a very un-flattering term. This, obviously, led to several conferences with his guidance councilors and a vice principal... all of which stated very clearly that WE (meaning the parents and the student) were in violation of the District's policies concerning discrimination. What if this behavior had led to the prospect of expulsion? The boy didn't even know what the words meant, he only knew they were nasty and he wanted to say something mean. Should he be expelled for that? Removed from the classmates and atmosphere that he has been surrounded by since kindergarten?

It may not be the PRIMARY role of the school district to discipline our children, but it is their primary role to assist the parents of these children in raising happy, healthy, well-adjusted citizens. Is this role best filled by simply expelling those that don't comply? That don't conform to the national yardstick?

The child in your son's class... the 9-year-old. As bad as the behavior was... do you really think that the 9 year old in question is beyond help? Three, perhaps four, incidents of bad behavior from a fourth grader constitutes "public enemy number one"? My point is simply that expulsion as a blanket answer to every single episode of aberrant behavior does nothing to address to problem, it only spreads the symptoms of the problem over a wider portion of the school district. While this may solve YOUR problem in the short term, does it make you feel any better about the values and moral judgement of the people educating your sons?