Fearing Gun Trouble, School Suspends Kids
Updated 1:44 PM ET April 6, 2000
SAYREVILLE, N.J. (Reuters) - Admittedly overcautious after last year's Columbine High School massacre and a rash of other school shootings, officials suspended four New Jersey kindergarten children for pointing fingers at each other as mock guns in an apparent game of "cops and robbers." The 6-year-old boys were suspended for three days after the March 15 incident during lunch recess in the playground at Wilson School in Sayreville, a waterfront community of 35,000 people.
The local Home News Tribune newspaper reported in April 6 editions that one of the children shouted to another, "Boom! I have a bazooka and I want to shoot you."
Parents of the suspended children and others of the school's 480 students feel the penalty was too severe. But Dennis Fyffe, assistant superintendent for the Sayreville School District said Thursday that the disciplinary action by principal Georgia Baumann was justified after several children came to teachers "visibly upset" by the incident.
"This was not just a game of cops and robbers," Fyffe told Reuters. "We did not just observe kids playing and decide to suspend them. We're not irrational people here going off the deep end because of some children playing."
Fyffe said the incident involved serious threats but he refused to disclose details, citing confidentiality. He said the incident happened just weeks after threats at the school that prompted the principal to counsel children.
Fyffe acknowledged that officials were overly cautious following a number of school shootings in the United States, particularly the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, in which two of the school's students shot dead 12 students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves. Twenty-three others were wounded.
"We're being beat up big time for this," Fyffe said. "But in light of what happened at Columbine, I'm going to take the more conservative view and avoid a catastrophe rather than have a tragedy."
Suspending the children was too extreme and deprived the children of their right to education, said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Newark, New Jersey.
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000406/13/news-crime-school
[This message has been edited by Skyhawk (edited April 06, 2000).]
Updated 1:44 PM ET April 6, 2000
SAYREVILLE, N.J. (Reuters) - Admittedly overcautious after last year's Columbine High School massacre and a rash of other school shootings, officials suspended four New Jersey kindergarten children for pointing fingers at each other as mock guns in an apparent game of "cops and robbers." The 6-year-old boys were suspended for three days after the March 15 incident during lunch recess in the playground at Wilson School in Sayreville, a waterfront community of 35,000 people.
The local Home News Tribune newspaper reported in April 6 editions that one of the children shouted to another, "Boom! I have a bazooka and I want to shoot you."
Parents of the suspended children and others of the school's 480 students feel the penalty was too severe. But Dennis Fyffe, assistant superintendent for the Sayreville School District said Thursday that the disciplinary action by principal Georgia Baumann was justified after several children came to teachers "visibly upset" by the incident.
"This was not just a game of cops and robbers," Fyffe told Reuters. "We did not just observe kids playing and decide to suspend them. We're not irrational people here going off the deep end because of some children playing."
Fyffe said the incident involved serious threats but he refused to disclose details, citing confidentiality. He said the incident happened just weeks after threats at the school that prompted the principal to counsel children.
Fyffe acknowledged that officials were overly cautious following a number of school shootings in the United States, particularly the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, in which two of the school's students shot dead 12 students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves. Twenty-three others were wounded.
"We're being beat up big time for this," Fyffe said. "But in light of what happened at Columbine, I'm going to take the more conservative view and avoid a catastrophe rather than have a tragedy."
Suspending the children was too extreme and deprived the children of their right to education, said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Newark, New Jersey.
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000406/13/news-crime-school
[This message has been edited by Skyhawk (edited April 06, 2000).]