<p>mom60, thanks for the clarification. Sorry I did not get at first that yours was a reference to the speaker that you had heard in your town.</p>
<p>I think it must be very, very confusing to young kids to be receiving possibly mixed messages about pot usage…particularly in a town where it’s evidently readily available because of medical usage laws. I have no personal experience with that, but i can see where it would be difficult. But, IMO, that is exactly the situation where the line must be firmly drawn with your kids. Many, many explicit conversations must take place so you know that THEY know and understand completely the consequences of making a decision to step beyond legal boundaries.</p>
<p>If you don’t agree with those boundaries, you can work to change them as you see fit, of course.</p>
<p>I have very, very mixed feelings about this. As I said, my kid made a mistake two years ago. The Gods smiled upon her and if she never steps a toe out of line again, her record will be clean for college acceptances. I am aware of how fortunate she was and I am grateful every, single day for her second chance. She has never done anything like that again, although she is far from perfect. From that date to this, she appears to have learned her lesson. I won’t speak of tomorrow or the next day, though.
That said, I can see another side. There is a kid in her school (a close neighbor, so we know very well for all of his life) who got caught smoking pot on the school grounds a couple of times earlier in his high school career. Short suspensions followed and he went back to the same behavior until his senior year when he was taken out of the school in handcuffs for dealing drugs in the school. His is an extreme example, but the first time his parents said “it’s only pot which I think should be legal” and this particular kid has always been a smarty-pants and was well and vocally aware that he had gotten over. He just turned 18 and is facing some serious jail time when he goes to trial (if he does) and his parents have serious legal bills. If he goes to jail it will be as an adult which is not good. But don’t worry. he’s back in school right now because it’s almost impossible to remove kids from NYC schools no matter what they’ve done. Anyhoo, on the one hand the punishment of the kids in the article is remarkably harsh. On the other hand, it’s enough to be a reality check and hopefully shock them into not doing something like that again. On the third hand, if the school had communicated clearly exactly what the consequences would be and kept their word, then this battle should have been fought before the fact because many kids do this stuff and nobody knows who will caught. Finally, one of the things that would go through my mind is to slap my kid upside the head for involving herself with a drug dealer. That, alone, can be a very dangerous thing with serious repercussions of its own.</p>
<p>If you are willing to discuss this–did you let the process take its course with your D after she got caught or did you try to influence the outcome of the process? I chose to let the process play out without trying to influence the outcome, but it was really hard to not attempt to save him from the consequences.</p>
<p>Zoosermom makes an important point - the same punishment may right for one kid, yet “too harsh” or “too lenient” for another. That’s the problem with all “zero tolerance” rules - they end up being “zero intelligence” when implemented.</p>
<p>There are 2 things I can’t stand in this world: Zero tolerance policies, (whether it be death for drug possession in Thailand of jail for possession of alcohol in the U.S.) and… the Dutch.</p>
I stayed out of the process and I instituted my own process at home that she will never forget. The process was fair to her in every way and I believe that the assistant principal was pulling for her. Please know that what she did was not drugs and there was a small element of her being victimized involved. She made her choice, she did a very bad thing, her parents did not fully prepare her for what she faced, and someone had it in for her. But she made a bad decision that she knew was a bad decision. Her fault. Partly our fault, a little bit the setter-upper’s fault. We are grateful beyond measure that nothing similar has ever happened.</p>
<p>I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a fine line between giving another chance and fending off life-altering (or ending) consequences and it’s almost impossible to know when the line has been crossed when you’re making the decision.</p>
<p>Gald things did not go as bad as they could have. </p>
<p>I agree that these —OH, MY GOSH-- moments are very difficult. And I found that it gave us the opportunity at home to address several issues in context rather than in theory. In theory, parenting looks easier than it actually is in reality.</p>
<p>I think that’s right 07Dad, but I also think that being an educator is tough too. I can see both sides of that, as well. (I am a Libra!). They’re simultaneously managing the needs of the perpetrator and the kids who are watching. While simultaneously attempting to prevent further behavior, provide a reality check, and not ruin a life. Not always easy to manage those things. If you choose a light punishment and the kid OD’s later, you second guess yourself. If you punish harshly and ruin a kid’s chances at college, you second guess yourself.</p>
<p>Some people here seem to be more worried about their kid’s college choices than their kid’s life lessons. Why should kids who have defied important rules have all of the same opportunities as those who have obeyed the rules? I do not think that a kid’s life should be ruined because of a mistake, but in real life, your actions and your choices do have consequences. And colleges would be wise to avoid kids who have shown consistent tendencies to “make mistakes” because it is their dime if they get sued later.</p>
<p>The private school S attended uses a discipline council made up of students and faculty. Each student has a faculty advisor (non-voting) who goes with him before the council. At one time, years ago, it was a completely student council. They added in faculty to the council to avoid the overly harsh penalties assessed by the students.</p>
<p>I have a close HS friend who was the principal at a San Antonio HS (she’s now retired). She did agonize over the discipline decisions she had to make.</p>
<p>“And colleges would be wise to avoid kids who have shown consistent tendencies to “make mistakes” because it is their dime if they get sued later”</p>
<p>Hey, I actually think we agree on this point. But I don’t see how the kids here have met that criteria. They screwed up ONCE. They’ll probably learn their lesson better than all the kids who smoke pot and never get caught…and this could be accomplished with less than a year sentence for sure. </p>
<p>So honestly, this is not going to ruin anyone’s life here. But if I have the goods to get into Princeton, and instead I go to Kennesaw state, I see this as a pretty big impact. One not fitting the crime, IMO.</p>
<p>Indeed. I think these consequences are not appropriate, however. Inappropriate consequences teach lessons that most people would rather not be taught to kids: that adults are arbitrary, punitive, cruel, vindictive, for example. That school administrators are “the bad guy.” That SCHOOL is “the bad guy.” Inappropriate discipline lessens the authority of the administrators and leads to other problems in the school (or school system).</p>
<p>Corrective and instructive – that should be the goal. The least amount of discipline that gets the point across and is corrective and instructive is what is appropriate. Anything else – not enough, too much – has fallout of its own, often much worse than the original offense.</p>
<p>Yep, inappropriate consequences can teach those things. But in this case, the adults involved are enforcing rules that were known and are in place for a reason. I would think that FAILURE to enforce the rules would teach an even more profound “lesson”: that you can continue to do things outside the rules and boundaries set by those in authority and not suffer any negative consequences. Or at least not the ones that have been established as being appropriate to the offense. In short, you are “special” or “lucky” or whatever you want to call it. </p>
<p>And sending those students to an alternative learning environment, and thus isolating them at least for a time from students who presumably do not wish to be around this type of behavior, does not in and of itself prevent them from continuing their education. Of course they could choose to give up and use this as an excuse to continue down a destructive path, but hopefully they will use this as impetus to change their behavior. </p>
<p>Remember, according to all we know from the article, the one year placement is a MAXIMUM placement. There is the opportunity to shorten this.</p>
<p>“But if I have the goods to get into Princeton, and instead I go to Kennesaw state, I see this as a pretty big impact. One not fitting the crime, IMO.”</p>
<p>But there’s lots of deserving students who don’t get into Princeton who didn’t get caught committing ANY crime, so I have no problem using this as a disqualifier, in the global scheme of things. They’ll have plenty of other opportunities - money can do much.</p>
<p>And screwed up ONCE? I have a bridge to sell you. I think you mean CAUGHT once. I’ve been working in the alcohol/drug field for more than a decade, and I don’t think I’ve EVER come across an individual - child or adult - who was caught for an offense the very first time they used. (We actually have a study on this for DUIs - on average, a person is caught one out of every 115 times they committed the offense.)</p>
<p>“That’s the problem with all “zero tolerance” rules - they end up being “zero intelligence” when implemented.”</p>
<p>You speak the truth.</p>
<p>“No kid’s chances at college are being ruined. They’ll just go to Kennesaw State rather than Princeton.”</p>
<p>AY-MEN. If they do well there, they can transfer to a flagship and they’ll be just fine. I’m living proof that a disastrous high school record can precede a lot of educational achievement. Now, a criminal conviction really might wreck their college chances, and these kids are damn lucky that they aren’t facing possession charges.</p>
<p>Could someone give a description of alternative school? I think we are all making comments based on our interpretation of what an alternative school is and I wonder if I am misunderstanding. Around here we have what’s called continuation school. That’s the only option in public school besides “regular” high school. You have to be in really serious trouble both academically and in other ways to be in continuation school. The goal of the continuation school is to get kids to graduate. They go four hours a day and are going to be doing the most basic things as these are kids who were failing every class – and I don’t mean honors classes. Now does alternative school in other areas mean something different than this? Because at our continuation school, there would be nothing for a highly academic kid to do except independent work if the teachers were even able to obtain independent work at that level or supervise it – there aren’t physics and calculus teachers at continuation school to check the work. Now if I’m wrong and alternative schools in other areas offer more than this, I’d like to know. But if it was my kid and it was this school district, first of all, in a million years, no one would put him in continuation school. They would follow the custom of our district and offer an “opportunity transfer” which means being shipped to a different public school in the district. This happens for kids who have gotten into serious trouble. They don’t put those kids into continuation school. But let’s say, for some reason, that was the consequence being given my kid for an offense. I would never send him. I would home school him or let him take his GED and go to community college. Our local schools have kids who are in the regular school who have parole officers and are in gangs and have failed all through high school and they are NOT in continuation school because there is not enough room in continuation schools. In fact, when our school district chose to move a continuation school back to our campus, the administrators were up in arms because they were worried about the safety issues those students would bring to the campus – essentially because of gang ties. I’m sorry, but I can’t see this being an appropriate setting or punishment for a good student caught smoking pot. But, again, I have no idea what the alternative school in question is like – can someone fill me in?</p>
<p>In our district there are two “alternate” schools - a continuation school which I assume is similar to the one you described, and another school which provides extremely flexible programs, and is utilized by both “problem” and extraordinarily gifted kids alike (although using very different methods.) As to what happened at the on in the OP - no idea.</p>