TexasCHLforum.com

MotherBear wrote: The ID listing for an inhaler makes sense to me. I don't think the school would have to make the determination who can or can't have one; the student can show a prescription for an inhaler, or an inhaler with the prescription label with their name on it, or a doctor's note, or whatever. I think a note from a parent should suffice as well, but schools don't tend to like that. I always got in trouble because my mom refused to do doctor's notes. She told the attendance folks that she said she was taking me to the doctor/dentist/whatever and unless they were calling her a liar that should be good enough.

Even doctor's notes don't appear to appease some of them. Our daughter had a legitimate medical condition and I personally took a new doctor's note in every month, handing it directly to a principal. The issue was her absences. She was in the top of her class, taking AP classes and doing well in them, despite the absences. I didn't find out until later that the school's real issue was State funding. If the school's attendance ratios didn't met State requirements, funding was reduced and the school was more interested in that funding than any doctor's verification of a medial condition. I had just been at the school in the morning with a fresh dated noted and they went to our daughter's class room that afternoon to assign her detention for the absences. Given what she was going through medically, such actions were devastating to her. We were paying for private tutoring to help her because of her absences and that didn't count either.

At the end of our daughter's situation, I gathered up all of my documentation and set up a meeting with the Superintendent. My documentation clearly showed that his administrators had twisted information so badly that it was unrecognizable. That's why I'm always suspicious as I was with the report that the kids in this case were shooting at other kids at the bus stop. If that had been true, it would have come out immediately. Given time, many innocent stories get twisted up to look totally different that the facts on which they should be based. I view school administrators with the same glasses as any other politician. Trust but verify is a good motto.

MotherBear wrote: Something sort of related to zero-tolerance policies is the issue I've seen with inhalers. I don't know much about the drugs in those things, but is there even a black market for them? When I was in high school one of my friends had severe asthma but was required to keep her inhaler at the school nurse's office. I remember one morning before school we were both in the bathroom when I heard a "thud" from her stall. I had to crawl under the door to unlock it and pull her out, and a couple of us carried her to the nurse's office. She'd had a sudden asthma attack and passed out. I think that was our junior year. Seems like by the time you're that age, you should be able to be trusted with an inhaler you might need suddenly for a documented medical condition.

For me, this is all the same mentality as with guns. Chicago's idea is to ban guns....except that as always, it results in only the illegal ones.

In fairness, the schools cannot make a determination about who should and who should not have inhalers or other medicine. It puzzles me, however, that many schools can have student ID badges and it won't take much to add a different kind of a card to the badge holder that says that the student is OK to have an inhaler. It could be issued with the rigor as the original ID.

One size fits all never works. There are too many kids who have exceptional conditions and the schools are not set up to handle any exceptions.

Moby wrote:In a letter obtained by WAVY.com, school principal Matthew Delaney found that the "children were firing pellet guns at each other, and at people near the bus stop." Delaney states in the letter that one child "was only 10 feet from the bus stop, and ran from the shots being fired, but was still hit."


Typical twisting of the truth. The boys were shooting at other kids waiting for the bus. Non participants to the fun and games.
A little different than innocent playing in their own yard. they were shooting "outside" of their yard at others not playing with them.

You make a good point. But here are some other considerations:

- I would like to hear from the witnesses. The principal's information is 2nd hand (at least).

- I'm still concerned about the jurisdiction of the school in this matter. My follow up question is: where does it end?

I certainly don't condone the shooting of pellets at each other and especially not at non-participants. That is wrong and it needs to be dealt with - by the students parents (again, assuming the report is accurate). An arranged meeting among the students and parents who were involved and the principal should have been held and an action plan determined from there. At best, it should have been a mutually agreed approach and not a unilateral one from the principal. In addition, there are other levels of discipline possible including the suspension of bus riding privileges.

I could be absolutely wrong but I see these situations exactly in the same light as I do the ones where out of State people were punished for gun control infractions in places like D.C. and NJ. The goal is to "make an example.". If this hadn't involved guns, it would have been handled differently.

I'm very biased. I've had personal experience with school administrators acting on incorrect information and with malice. I do not assign divine qualities to anything that they say. They are humans just like the rest of us. I'm not sure that all of them believe that.

Edit - typo

longhorn_92 wrote:Do you understand what these socialists are doing? They are nudging... They as shoving... They are educating the children and everyone else that guns are the most evil things in the world. They take events like this and make examples out of those children. Just like the parent who was arrested and charged with second degree assault on a police officer for asking questions about Common Core. They are making examples so the rest of the people become scared cattle.

And the administrators in many school districts are the socialists who are using the power of the government to do it. Common Core is the Federal government's vehicle to enable it all.

Zero tolerance is a cop out to absolve those involved of the blame. "We are just enforcing the rules".