http://www.bullshitwatch.org/index.php?entry=entry050509-210747
Piss Off! I'm Talking To My Mom
Tuesday, May 10, 2005, 12:07 AM
05/09/2005 - Student Suspended for Talking to Mom
No doubt you saw this story about Kevin Francois make the rounds late last week. Kevin is a high school student in Georgia who was suspended after an incident between him and a teacher who asked the boy to hang up his cellphone. The school has a policy of no cellphone use during school hours. Kevin, who was on the phone with his mother (she's stationed in Iraq right now) refused to give up the phone and the teacher escorted him to the principal's office where the situation escalated resulting in the boy's suspension from school.
Those are the facts that are not in dispute. It has the makings of great blog fodder. Here's a student who's mother is risking her life in the service of her country, suspended for talking on the phone to that very woman. Zero Intelligence demonstrates the high level of emotion the topic holds by asking, "Do these people have any understanding or compassion? This kid isn't going to see his mother for a year. He only gets to talk to her once a month. A teacher disconnects his call with his mother and then they make him sit there while she calls back and not let him answer the phone. How in the world can they expect him to be anything BUT defiant and belligerent?"
There was a lot of support for the student in blogs like Outside the Beltway and in Michelle Malkin's blog. Conservatives were outraged at the shoddy treatment of a soldier's son. Liberals were outraged at the insensitivity shown to a child who only wanted to talk to his mother. But as we learned with the William Poole affair, in these cases of opressed students, there are two sides to every story.
According to a story circulated by Knight Ridder, the teacher in this case claims Poole was belligerent and used profanity when responding to her request for him to hang up the phone. Felicita Pescia, a 20 year veteran and winner of the school's 2004 Teacher of the Year award, claims that Francois did not tell her that he was talking to his deployed mother. Adminstrators claim the boy became disorderly and what was originally a three day suspension was increased to a ten day suspension.
So, we have the word of the school administration versus that of the student. Normally, I'm inclined to give the student the benefit of the doubt, but the Knight Ridder piece goes on to say that Francois was a problem student to begin with. Combine that fact with the teacher's credentials and the scale tips a bit in her favor.
On the surface this would make a great case against zero tolerance rules. But that argument suffers when you consider that the school already has a policy that allows students to talk to deployed parents during school hours.
Bottom line, it appears that Kevin Francois was suspended for his reaction to a teacher's request that he hang up his cellphone, not for accepting a call from his mother. The question is, whose account of that reaction is true?(ZombieKiller)