But angelmom, the principal wasn't taking a tiny weapon away! She was taking away a TOY that in no way presented any threat to anyone. And if the school is a zero tolerance for weapons, and toys that resemble weapons are considered to be weapons, then why the heck did the principal deem the toy sword to be "less" of a weapon than the little toy gun?
BTW, the "nearly busted" and "almost suspended" would have lacked their adverbs had the mother not protested, and loudly, and involved media. The school backed down because of the mother's protest.
Nothing about this makes a lick of sense!
The problem is, where you do draw the line? Are toys okay? What about air-soft guns? They are toys, yet they look so much like real guns that airport security often has a hard time telling for sure, and at least one child has been killed because someone thought he was pointing a real gun at another child.
What about size? This is tiny, but as a poster above mentioned, there are real weapons that are very small.
Somewhere there has to be a line. If you keep moving it, it's harder to follow the rules than if there is just one flat rule: NO GUNS.
That includes pictures of guns (we had a child suspended for that - he was drawing incredibly violent pictures and the school required that he be evaluated before returning to school) or toys (we've had 2 middle school boys expelled for bringing their air-soft guns to a school dance! :waitasec
or even verbal threats (we currently have a third grader being assessed b/c he told another child he was going to bring a gun to school and kill him).
As an administrator, I cannot imagine a worse nightmare than having a child bring a weapon to school and harm others, unless it is that same scenario but I had a warning and didn't take it seriously enough.
AND, as the poster above stated, why is he bringing toys to school in the first place?
Last, the mother claims he was "almost suspended" in the original article, but never actually says that suspension was going to be the punishment or that the principal even suggested that. My guess is that the principal referred to the weapons policy which states that he would normally be suspended, and actually did use some common sense by not imposing that.
You are right that America is going to hell, but a lot of the reason is these parents who never let their kids learn any hard lessons about truth and consequences. I can promise you that if my kid got called into the principal's office they would be upset too, but not because of a pending lawsuit. It would be concern for how long their punishment at home was going to be for breaking the rules to begin with!
PS...he is not a preschooler. He is in 4th grade, so 9 or 10 years old. Too old to be bringing toys to school, and old enough to know the rules.