This just keeps getting better the more I read it.
Then, the next morning, “we received a letter in the mail, postmarked the 18th [of October] saying that Amber had been expelled,” Heinz said. “Now I guess it’s possible that someone rushed down to the post office [after the hearing] and got the letter postmarked that same day, but I kind of have the feeling this was a foregone conclusion, that that letter was written before we even walked into the expulsion hearing.”….
“It’s not what we would consider to be a traditional butter knife,” Bailey told ABC News. “Even though it’s blunt on the end, it does have a serrated edge.”…
“Certainly, if it was my child, I would have a different perspective,” she said. “But if you’re a school administrator, your perspective has to be broader. You have to consider the safety of the entire student population.”….
Safety from what? Being buttered to death? Are fingernail files off limits?
How can anyone adequately mock and revile this?
The sad thing is that many schools are really wising up on this zero-tolerance thing, having realized the surprising fact that protecting kids from other kids with butter knives doesn’t actually make them safer, and expelling butter knife wielders sends a rather mixed message about what it takes to be unfit to attend school. But this little girl is going to suffer just because her school district hasn’t yet caught up with the general discrediting of the policy.
And BTW, almost ALL butter knives that go with place settings have serrated edges. I suppose a few place knives don’t, but for the most part, only the fancy ones that go on the butter dish itself don’t have serrated edges. So the school administrator doesn’t even know what a butter knife is, and is presuming to judge between “ordinary” butter knives and “really dangerous ones” — the ones that could, oh maybe, graze somebody a little bit if you pressed REALLY hard.
It’s all just flaming idiocy, and it’s just vastly complicated the life of a girl and her family (having to enroll and pay for a private school not previously in their plans) for absolutely no valid reason.
Maybe he thought she would sharpen it and use it as a shank 🙂