http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/17/nyregion/17THRE.html?ex=991368000&en=1bd14a3c9b39153d&ei=5001&partner=yahoo

May 17, 2001

Crackdown on Threats in Schools Fails a Test

By KATE ZERNIKE

ANALAPAN, N.J., May 15 — Just weeks after the school shootings in March in Santee, Calif., the county prosecutor here met with local school superintendents and emphasized the need for zero tolerance. There is no gray area, he told them. Any student who makes a threat, even in jest, must be disciplined.

The schools obeyed, fast and furiously.

A 10-year-old girl who whimpered, "I could kill her!" after she wet her pants because a teacher had refused to let her go to the bathroom was suspended for three days. A 10-year- old who muttered, "I oughtta murder his face!" when someone left his desk in disarray got the same punishment.

The suspensions — at least 50 in the last six weeks, compared with almost none last year — were meted out mostly to children in kindergarten to third grade, in many cases for repeating expressions they had heard their parents use at home.

All those suspended, including kindergartners, now have police files in their names.

Parents reacted to the suspensions with outrage, hiring lawyers to defend their children. Confronted by the anger, the Manalapan-Englishtown school board said tonight that it would stop the automatic suspensions and return decisions about discipline to teachers and principals. Board members said they would vote next week to review the police file for every suspended child and expunge any records if the punishment seemed unfair. A policy that looked good on paper, they said, had not worked well in practice.

"I don't think anybody envisioned this — the prosecutor's office, the superintendent, the principals," said James Mumolie, the school board president.

What happened in this solidly middle-class town shows some of the pitfalls of a post-Columbine era, when no officials want to be caught without the strictest of policies should a shooting occur at their school, and when parents, including many in Manalapan, demand toughness.

Now the same parents complain that schools are going so far as to trample on civil rights. "They're suspending babies, babies, for saying things they hear everywhere they go," said Wanda Minken, a parent of three elementary school students in Manalapan who said her children have not been suspended, "yet."

"It's McCarthyism, that's what this is," Mrs. Minken said. "These are kids who've never even had lunch detention."

About 90 percent of school systems nationwide have what they call zero- tolerance policies for violence or threats, according to the United States Department of Education. Few have enforced them as strictly as Manalapan, but more and more are learning the lesson that Manalapan has.

In February, the American Bar Association passed a resolution opposing zero-tolerance policies, saying they have "redefined students as criminals." Among the harsher cases, they cited a Louisiana boy who was suspended for two days after warning his peers in the lunch line not to eat all the potatoes or "I'm gonna get you!" The school board in West Windsor, N.J., let up on its zero- tolerance policy last fall after a furor over the suspension of a 9-year-old boy who had threatened to shoot a wad of paper with a rubber band.

Similarly, the federal Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools warns against the policies and is planning to release a new handbook, written with the Secret Service, on how to evaluate threats better.

Those urging less strictness point out that school violence is down by 30 percent in the last decade, that students are still more likely to be hit by lightning than to be killed in school. Studies have shown that zero-tolerance policies suspend disproportionate numbers of black students.

Zero tolerance was originally applied to gun possession when President Bill Clinton signed the Gun Free Schools Act in 1994. But many schools adopted the same stance toward threats, especially after a student fatally shot 2 other students and injured 13 at Santana High School in Santee in March, an incident that sparked a spate of copycat shootings and threats nationwide.

Manalapan, a suburb of tidy subdivisions and large lawns an hour's drive south of New York City, is the kind of town, parents say, where sport utility vehicles and minivans clog the streets on parent-teacher conference nights. Last year, parents at the elementary schools pressed the school board to make sure no intruders entered the buildings, which prompted the schools to require that visitors be buzzed in.

So the letter that went home in April did not surprise them.

"The decision on whether or not to report a threat does not belong to the school official," said the letter, which was signed by the superintendents of the seven elementary school districts that feed into the Freehold Regional High School District as well the Freehold superintendent. "He/ she must report all threats to the police, who, in turn, must notify the prosecutor's office," the note said. "Consequences may result in fines, jail time, or other penalties."

No incidents of violence were reported last year, said Robert Weiner, the assistant superintendent, nor could anyone remember any. "In our world today, that's really quite amazing," he said. "It's a pretty harmless type of place. But then you look at a place like Columbine — who would expect this to happen there? A Columbine isn't that dissimilar to a Manalapan. The parents react to that, the schools react to the parents."

Michael Seminerio was among those parents who initially supported the policy. Last year, he and his wife went to the police after the school, they said, refused to discipline a boy who had threatened their son, then 8.

His support turned to outrage when his son was suspended this month and a letter was put in a police file after the boy, now 9, joked with other boys about selling tickets to kill a girl. It was, his father admitted, "a bonehead move," but not reason for a police record.

"Zero tolerance has a purpose, a legitimate purpose, but they're abusing it right now," he said. "They're handing it out like candy. I understand where they're coming from, I understand the kids need to be taught a lesson, but there's got to be a better way."

Last week, the girl whom his son threatened was suspended herself for threatening to blow up someone's house. And in the uproar, fifth graders have told one another that the police will invade and search their homes if they make threats.

Discipline became so erratic that a 12-year-old shoved during a touch football game was suspended for blurting out, "I'll kill you!" but the classmate who shoved him was not.

The parents objected to police questioning of their children without them or a lawyer present. And they said the suspensions sent the wrong message.

Lisa Dimino, whose 12-year-old son was the student shoved in the touch football game, said her son asked her whether he would have been suspended if he had simply shoved back.

"I don't want my child touching another child," she told the school board. "I'm embarrassed to say I live in Manalapan. I'm embarrassed about what we are teaching these children."

Her husband, Larry, added, "It can create more anger and hostility if the children have the feeling that they have been wrongly accused."

William Modzeleski, director of the federal Office of Safe and Drug- Free Schools, agreed, saying that any policies must be within a context of teaching about violence prevention.

"Zero-tolerance policies in and of themselves aren't inherently bad," he said. "But they have to be balanced with common sense."

In Manalapan, the school board members say they are trying to do just that. But common sense is not entirely comforting, not in a world where a first grader kills a classmate.

"No one has found the happy medium," said Mr. Mumolie, the board president. "I think what's happening right now is that society is looking at what's happened to all these kids across the country and saying, `What went wrong?' And we're deciding that maybe we can't trust anybody. Isn't that a terrible thing to say?"

-- (in@the.news), May 21, 2001

Answers

`What went wrong?'

I wonder what the ratio is of kids who have something to do after school (read: EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITY) and those that do not.

Back in the day (can't believe I just typed that!!) we had so much to do after school, there wasn't time to get into much trouble....

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), May 21, 2001.

Deano, these kids are often have bewilderingly complex schedules of afterschool activities. I once drove 75 miles in a single day trying to get both kids to various activities they had to get to in a single afternoon, and accomplished it with split-second timing.

But that is not the issue -- the article is on kids getting in trouble for using violent metaphors in school, and has nothing to do with their extra-curricular activities.

Perhaps it would help to re-frame the context a little. I've lost a couple of beloved friends in the past couple of years, both suddenly. One died during an operation, another was drowned, both were parents of young children. When this happens to you, as you wander around in a haze of pain and grief, you hear things with new ears. While you are being made to appreciate how precious life is, you become acutely aware of how many violent metaphors we throw around so carelessly. "I could kill her." "You'll die for this." "I could have died of embarrassment."

-- Firemouse (soccermom@ballet.class), May 22, 2001.

Cartoons are full of violent threats. My kid got a demerit in the permanent school records for accurately quoting Shakespeare. Same kid almost got us arrested for showing pornagraphy to a minor when what the kid was actually describing was a picture of a statue in an artbook in the school's own library.

If parents and teachers were allowed to spank kids immediately after an offending behavior, the rate of the offending behavior would go way down. A cause and effect relationship requires the shortest possible amount of time between behaviors and punishment. There, I used the "p" word.

-- helen still can't sit down (censor@this.that), May 22, 2001.

It's a sad comentary on our culture that violent metaphors come so naturally to our children.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), May 22, 2001.

firemouse

I agree to an extent. I think where I was going with this is if the kids that 'originally' got us into this zero tolerance attitude (Columbine) had something to keep them busy after school (other than building bombs and stocking ammo in their bedrooms) it may still be business as usual.

You know, there was a time when "I'm going to murderlize you!", was perfectly innocent.

How times have changed......

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), May 22, 2001.

Er, let's see... a week after Columbine, my little one was at t-ball, one of those wholesome after-school activities you describe. Coach said to a kid (we're talking 8 year olds here), "Hit that ball as if it has a face on it and you want to kill it." Another athletic team she was on had one practice where the boys were attacking each other so badly that by the end of the afternoon only two boys had not been crying. Athletics are the one sacrosanct afterschool program that doesn't get cut when the taxpayers vote down the budget, especially in a rural school like ours. My one brush with a local political issue over the local athletic establishment in our schools left our group with 5 cases of spiked tires. The issue meant so much to these supporters of character-building afterschool sports that they were willing to do something that could have hurt our families if there had been a blow-out.

Is it a wonder that that sort of bullying by jocks produces the Columbine revenge?

Bad enough a teacher lets a 10 year old piss herself, you want to give that teacher power to hit her too? Sheesh.

-- Firemouse (footballplayer'smom@another.practice), May 22, 2001.

I reckon some coaches have different approaches than others. Sorry your experience hasn't been that good. FYI - some sports are very tough in nature and kids will cry. Some used refer to that as character building, nowadays some refer to it as child abuse (how sad is that?!?). I still say team sports is one of the best ways to teach kids responsibility. And, I still say team sports early in life breeds success later in life. Teamwork is essential in almost every arena.

It certainly appears you are defending the Columbine murderers because they were 'picked on' by jocks. I'm sure you don't really mean that.

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), May 22, 2001.