Colorado School Board Issues Very Belated Apology for Gross Over-Reaction
Teacher sees a toy gun - as was clear from the orange tip - in a student's room during an online class. An intelligent teacher might have called home - THIS teacher called the police.
The rationalization was, “Our number one concern is Isaiah could have been the next Tamir Rice.” The utter failure in that logic is that Tamir Rice was shot BY police. Calling the police on the student actually placed him in more danger than his toy gun did.
Despite the student having done absolutely nothing wrong, the school board, likely to cover itself, backed the over-reacting teacher by suspending the student.
The state was more intelligent, enacting “Isaiah's Law.” Among other things, it specifies that, regarding online instruction, a student's home is not legally the same as school property. One would have thought that was obvious without a law. Isaiah attended the signing ceremony.
“Waiting almost a year to issue an apology to a child that had already endured so much was very insincere to me,” she told Colorado Matters. “As educators and parents — when a child makes mistakes — we teach them, ‘Take accountability for your actions, apologize when you're wrong, own up to it.' So I just feel like the district should have held themselves to the same standard that we hold our children to.”
Indeed.