Zero tolerance over “may look too much like a weapon” extends into the science classroom
Students and parents have rallied around Greg Schiller after his suspension in February from the downtown Cortines School of Visual & Performing Arts. Supporters have organized a rally on his behalf at the campus for Thursday, gathered hundreds of signatures on a petition calling for his reinstatement and set up a social media page.
Schiller was ordered to report daily to a district administrative office pending an investigation after two students turned in science-fair projects that were designed to shoot small projectiles.
One project used compressed air to propel a small object but it was not connected to a source of air pressure, so it could not have been fired. (In 2012, President Obama tried out a more powerful air-pressure device at a White House Science Fair that could launch a marshmallow 175 feet.)
Another project used the power from an AA battery to charge a tube surrounded by a coil. When the ninth-grader proposed it, Schiller told him to be more scientific, to construct and test different coils and to draw graphs and conduct additional analysis, said his parents, who also are Los Angeles teachers.
A school employee saw the air-pressure project and raised concerns about what looked to her like a weapon, according to the teachers union and supporters. Schiller, who said he never saw the completed projects except in photos, was summoned and sent home. Both projects were confiscated as “evidence,” said Susan Ferguson, whose son did the coil project.
L.A. Unified School District administrators have told Schiller that he was removed from his classroom for “supervising the building, research and development of imitation weapons,” said union representative Roger Scott.
Better get rid of toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms, who knows what weapon could be developed from those cardboard tubes!!
The stupid, it burns.
People are fond of referring to The Four Boxes.
One of those boxes is the Ammo Box.
Therefore California needs a Zero Tolerance Policy against boxes.
What’s that? This would also ban the Ballot Box?
So sorry, but it’s for the children.
So much for encouraging students to get more involved in STEM. Fortunately, we still don’t have enough “Womyn’s/Queer/Trans/Miscellaneous, Self-Identified Oppressed Group” Studies B.A.’s out there.
Never has this word been more apt:
Hoplophobia.
That’s weird. The kids here routinely do science reports on ballistics for the science fair.
Now leigh, be fair: they’re <whisper> Okies! </whisper>
Precisely. We’ll see who has the last laugh, eh?
I’m a little disappointed – this is the 21st Century, after all. You’d think at least one enterprising student would be working on a Death Ray or the like by now.
You know, I have one simple request.
And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.
this guy is getting screwed and yet
just cause the herd of stupid has turned on him, that’s still not evidence that he’s not a pig-ignant unionwhore teacherslut himself
he chose to go work at a child-abusing institution remember
Better get rid of toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms, who knows what weapon could be developed from those cardboard tubes!!
Have they phased out drinking straws, as well? ‘Cuz I think I remember some old wives tale (prolly a hundred years old or more) where you could roll up the straw wrapper, stick it in your mouth, and then shoot the saliva-infused ball of paper through the straw by exhaling forcefully.
That sort of deadly improvised weapon is just a tragedy waiting to happen.
That straw and saliva-soaked paperwad is an infectious ebola inoculation distribution device! Seize it!
You can also make little paper cones and push pins in them and shoot those out of straws. Blow darts!
That marshmallow gun problem has Putin worried.
“probably”
Oh gawd. We did that in the 5th grade. There must have been at least 50 in the ceiling tiles before the teacher noticed. Then she noticed her box of little push pins was missing…
On the bright side, it’s about time this zero tolerance nonsense bit a teacher in the ass.
Now, if only we can figure out a way to make it bite the school board in the ass….