After a first-grade boy brought a four-inch kitchen knife to a small-town New Jersey elementary school to protect himself from bullies last month, school officials punished the boy and notified local police, which is required under district policy.
Otherwise, the officials at the Jeffrey Clark School in East Greenwich did not make a big deal about the small knife, which they say never left the boy’s backpack.
Did local parents appreciate the way school officials tastefully handled the March 30 incident?
Don’t be ridiculous.
Instead, reports the South Jersey Times, East Greenwich parents went on social media this week to criticize school officials and the larger school district for not informing them about a mistake made by one little boy.
“When it comes to the safety and security of out (sic) children, I believe parents have the right to know immediately,” one commenter wrote on an East Greenwich community Facebook page.
Many other commenters noted that the boy must have felt terribly frightened if he did, indeed, bring a knife to protect himself. They wondered if the bullies were also punished.
East Greenwich Township school district superintendent James Lynch said everybody needs to calm down.
“In our minds as a school district it was a non-incident,” Lynch told the Times.
Lynch also noted that student privacy laws prevent him from revealing the severity of the boy’s punishment or too many details about the incident.
Stories about knives in taxpayer-funded schools come up fairly regularly across the fruited plain.
“There is no one in our school system who wants to see any child hurt,” school board president Bob Miller told the newspaper. “I see their side of it, but what I’m asking for is to trust the trained professionals and police who made a decision that it did not reach a level that warranted a mass notification.”
In April 2013, Cupertino, Calif. principal Brandi Hucko suspended a fifth grader and threatened him with expulsion for bringing a small Swiss Army knife (with tweezers, a toothpick, a nail file) on a school-sponsored camping trip. The Garden Gate Elementary School administrator allegedly isolated the 10-year-old boy in a teacher’s lounge area from all the other children. He was forced to eat meals by himself. (RELATED: Fifth-Grader Suspended At Overnight Nature Camp For Bringing Swiss Army Knife)
In February 2014, a Clarksville, Tenn. high school senior was suspended for 10 days and faced a multitude of additional punishments including criminal charges because school officials found a knife belonging to his father inside his father’s car. (RELATED: Student Suspended, Criminally Charged For Fishing Knife Left In Father’s Car)
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