From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I'll raise your finger with my chicken....... :-( Stupidity running
rampant. Mike Pietrantoni
Boy Suspended for Pointing Chicken
.c The Associated Press
JONESBORO, Ark. (AP) - An 8-year-old boy was suspended from school for 3 days
after pointing a breaded chicken finger at a teacher and saying, ``Pow, pow,
pow.''
The incident apparently violated the Jonesboro School District's
zero-tolerance policy against weapons. The boy was suspended last week.
Kelli Kissinger, mother of first-grader Christopher, said she believed the
punishment was too severe.
``I think a chicken strip is something insignificant,'' she said. ``It's just
a piece of chicken. How could you play like it's a gun?''
South Elementary principal Dan Sullivan said he was prevented by law from
discussing Christopher's suspension.
Sullivan said the school has zero-tolerance rules because the public wants
them.
In March 1998, four students and a teacher were killed and 10 others wounded
when two youths opened fire on a schoolyard at Jonesboro's Westside Middle
School.
``People saw real threats to the safety and security of their students,''
Sullivan said.
A school discipline form provided by the boy's mother and signed by Sullivan
says the child was suspended because he ``took a chicken strip off his plate,
pointed it at (a teacher) and said 'Pow, pow, pow,' like he was shooting
her.''
Sullivan said punishment for a threat ``depends on the tone, the demeanor,
and in some manner you judge the intent. It's not the object in the hand,
it's the thought in the mind. Is a plastic fork worse than a metal fork? Is a
pencil a weapon?''
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