Story Archive

Zero Tolerance for Kids Acting Like Adults

Adrionna Harris, a sixth-grader at Bayside Middle School in Virginia Beach, Va., spotted another student cutting himself with a razor blade. “It was a 911 situation,” said Harris’s mother, Rachael, “and there wasn’t time to find a teacher.” So the girl took the blade away from the student, threw it away, and helped him herself. When school officials found out what she had done — because she told them — they immediately suspended her for 10 days, pending permanent expulsion for “possessing” a “weapon” on school grounds against the district’s zero tolerance policy. The school wouldn’t even return Rachael’s phone calls — until the local TV station got involved, even calling School Board members at home to ask why. They moved up Adrionna’s hearing, and at the hearing voted to clear her record completely and let her come back to school. Would she do it again? “I would do it again even if I got suspended, yes,” she said. (RC/WAVY Portsmouth) ...And unfortunately, school officials probably would too.