Story Archive

This Will Really Piss You Off

A teacher at a school in the Klein (Texas) Independent School District refused a request by a 12-year-old boy to use the restroom. The seventh grader repeated the request several times, but the teacher still refused, and finally told him she would “write him up” as “truant” if he left the room. “The really outrageous part is that she told him, ‘I hope you pee on yourself’,” says Bill Hawkins. The boy didn’t: instead, he was so desperate that he used a water bottle to relieve himself right there in the classroom. If you think the teacher was fired, you don’t understand zero tolerance: Hawkins is the boy’s new attorney, who his parents hired to appeal the boy’s punishment: an in-school suspension, followed by one month of a “Disciplinary Alternative Education Program” because, school officials say, the boy’s behavior rose to the level of “Engaging in serious or persistent acts of disobedience or disorderly behavior which may prove detrimental to the school, harmful to health and safety and inhibiting the rights of others.” (RC/Houston Chronicle) ...And if there’s anyone who knows about inhibiting the rights of others, it’s those school officials.