Recently the policy of "Zero Tolerance" in schools hit home for my family. Because of that it has spurred me on to bring this crime being perpetrated against children to light.

Linda Starr, a former teacher and writer states, zero tolerance, as enforced in too many schools today, is a policy that punishes the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It treats children as adult offenders without the presumption of innocence, disrupts the lives and educations of good students nearly as often as it does those of troubled students, and treats all covered offenses and all students equally, regardless of age, intent, past behavior, or magnitude of the offense. It has to stop.

Long gone are the days when a child who made a mistake was able to redeem themselves and move on to realize personal growth.

Here is the sad truth: The ridiculous cases filling the newspapers of kids chewing breakfast into gun-shaped pastries or giving an aspirin to a friend aren’t the exception, but the rule. In practice, zero-tolerance policies are aimed at all sorts of petty, often-arbitrary annoyances that get under the skin of individual school administrators.

Since the early 1970s, inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending has more than doubled yet the scores of graduating seniors haven’t budged upwards. We tell ourselves that we send our children to school to learn how to think in a critical, sophisticated, nuanced way and they encounter instead a system that is arbitrary, harsh, and ineffective at teaching.

That teaches children a lesson about the world, but it’s well short of the education they deserve.

Over the past two decades, school discipline has grown increasingly harsh and impersonal. Many schools and states are willing to exclude— temporarily and permanently—students for almost any type of behavior. Even when students’ behavior poses no real danger to school and involves the type of immature mischief parents expect of normally developing kids, schools dig in their heels and insist that they must banish students. Local communities and policy advocates have pushed back and managed some important successes in recent years, but the seriousness and scope of the problem demands a systematic long-term check. Relying on basic constitutional rights and fairness concepts, courts must reengage on issues of discipline and enforce students’ rights. Courts cannot simply abandon students to school boards and the political process. Too often, both schools and politicians have shown themselves to be irrational and willing to sacrifice students in the expedient pursuit of other goals.

The president of the American Federation of Teachers recently issued a remarkable mea culpa. August 25, 2016

For years, Randi Weingarten supported "zero-tolerance" policies in schools. Under zero tolerance, students who break certain school rules face mandatory penalties, including suspension and referral to law enforcement. The approach gained popularity during the 1980s, and by the mid-1990s, most school districts in the United States had adopted some form of zero tolerance.

But at the end of 2015, Randi Weingarten wrote an editorial in American Educator saying those policies had been a failure.
"When you see that you're wrong, you have to say that you're wrong and apologize for it," Weingarten said in an interview.

Zero-tolerance policies were supposed to make schools safer and make discipline fair. But in practice, the policies "didn't help us get to the safe and welcoming school environments that every parent wants for his or her child," Weingarten said.

As a former Women's Health Nurse Practitioner, in no way do I want to minimize the issue of violence against women or children. Rape is clearly a crime of violence, and must be dealt with appropriately. A pedophiles predatory behavior is abhorrent, and must also be dealt with sternly and appropriately.

The truth is, many children are being wrongly convicted of being sex offenders. And, their lives are being ruined forever by the schools and the court system.

According to the Burney Law Firm, in New York, a child can be registered for grabbing someone’s ass. Stuff that has nothing to do with sex, like even the mildest forms of inappropriate behavior can get you marked a sex offender. There really isn’t any rhyme or reason to it any more.

These are not things that have anything to do with the policy underlying sex offender registries. There is zero concern that the people who commit such offenses pose a present threat of molesting kids or committing rape. It’s an unthinking response. It’s a panicked “oh my God think of the children” shouted by people who aren’t actually thinking of the children.

It’s a huge expansion of governmental power, for no good reason. It’s one of the worst penalties the state can impose, and it’s mandated for some of the most minor offenses we’ve got. Clearly, something is wrong.

Parents say assault charges against son too much

By Dan Benson, Journal Sentinel, Inc
Published on: 12/7/2008
Mequon - In a case his parents consider prosecutorial overkill, a 14-year-old Mequon boy has been charged with five counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and faces the prospect of being tagged a sex offender for touching several girls in what his parents admit was an inappropriate manner.

So, last week in Ozaukee County Circuit Court, the boy's parents said no when Ozaukee County District Attorney Sandy Williams offered to reduce the charges to two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and, if he pleaded no contest, to expunge his conviction if he stayed out of trouble for a year.

The parents said their son was guilty of nothing more than disorderly conduct.

"We don't want to have anything to do with sexual assault," said the boy's father, who along with the boy's mother is not being identified to protect the identity of the juvenile boy. "He could be put on a sex offender registry list that would come back to haunt him."

Now the boy is scheduled to appear in court again Feb. 3 for an evidentiary hearing, which amounts to a trial, in which the girls are likely to be compelled to testify and experts will be called to give their opinion on whether a 12- or 13-year-old boy can be sexually aroused by grabbing a girl's buttocks.

The maximum penalty for each of the five misdemeanor charges is nine months' incarceration, according to a juvenile delinquency petition. According to state Department of Corrections spokesman Rachel Krueger, those convicted of fourth-degree sexual assault are not required to register as sex offenders, but a judge could order the boy to do so, especially since the alleged victims were children and because of the number of counts against him.

According to the petition filed in July by Williams, here's what happened:

Two girls at Steffen Middle School in Mequon told officials June 6, a Friday, that the boy, 13 years old at the time, during class had grabbed the buttocks of one girl, 14, and unhooked the bra of the other girl, 13.

Under questioning by police, officials learned of other unreported incidents going back to October 2007, when the boy was 12, when he grabbed other girls' buttocks or their breasts, licked a girl's neck and tickled another girl in the stomach, according to the petition.

The boy's father met with Steffen Principal Deborah Anderson later that day and was informed that his son would be suspended for the last four days of the school year and that the matter was being referred to the school's police liaison officer "as matter of routine," the father said.

Mequon-Thiensville Schools Superintendent Demond Means declined to comment.

On the following Monday, the parents learned that what they thought was a school issue had become a police matter when the boy was called into the Mequon Police Department to be interviewed and was arrested.

The father had hoped that a visit to the police station would be little more than an attempt to help his son "man up" to what he had done, he said.

"I was in total shock" when his son was arrested, he said, especially after he had told the police officer they had already taken steps to discipline their son.

The weekend before the arrest, the boy's parents had made arrangements for their son to be taken to a wilderness camp for troubled teens in Utah.

It was a surprise to the boy when he was whisked away in the middle of the night on Wednesday and flown to the camp.

He stayed there for the next two months.

Mequon police Capt. Dan Buntrock, who recommended the charges to Williams, said the charges are appropriate for the behavior.

"If someone touches someone sexually in a bar, is that fourth-degree sexual assault? Yes," he said. "It doesn't really matter where it occurs. And when the victim is of a certain age, it's even more serious."

State law says fourth-degree sexual assault occurs when someone intentionally touches another person to gratify himself sexually, or sexually degrades or humiliates that person.

In the opinion of Buntrock and Williams, that's what the boy did.

To the parents, however, their son is guilty of inappropriate behavior, disorderly conduct and "numskull friendliness," the mother said, quoting a therapist with whom her son has met.

"A 12-year-old boy does not do these things to sexually gratify himself," she said.

According to affidavits submitted in court Thursday in an attempt to block an order to testify in court, the girls and their parents said they did not feel degraded by the boy and that they did not want him criminally prosecuted, only disciplined by the school for the two events on June 6.

Their son and the girls remain friends, the boy's parents said.

NO HUGS ALLOWED...Is That 4-Year-Old Really a Sex Offender?

By Yvonne Bynoe
Sunday, October 21, 2007

Could my son be accused of sexual harassment? He's a good boy. He likes watching "Thomas the Tank Engine" on television and playing "Simon Says." Like many 3-year-olds, he's very affectionate. Unfortunately, hugging his teacher may get him suspended from nursery school.
I doubt that it will happen to my son. But the frightening fact is that it could. I recently learned that children nationwide, some of preschool age, have been suspended from school or taken to jail after being accused of sexual harassment. In their zeal to avoid lawsuits, educators seem to be ignoring important information, such as whether the accused child intended to commit a crime or even knows how to pronounce the word "harassment."
Sex education tends to be controversial, partly because parents have such varying and often strongly held beliefs about how, when and even if the topic should be introduced to their children. But if schools have the authority to brand a 3-year-old a sex offender, they also have the responsibility to provide parents with clear guidelines about appropriate physical conduct.
It's great that we are more aware than ever about sexual harassment in schools. But it is a terrible mistake to permanently label children who are barely out of diapers.
Consider these egregious examples: In December 2006, a 4-year-old boy in Waco, Tex., was punished with an in-school suspension after a female aide accused him of sexual harassment. According to a television station there, the child had hugged the woman while getting on the bus, and she later complained to administrators at La Vega Primary School that the child had put his face in her chest. School officials later agreed to remove sexual references but refused to expunge the "inappropriate physical contact" charge from the boy's school record.
In my home state of Maryland, state data show that during the 2005-06 school year, 28 kindergartners were suspended for sex offenses, including 15 for sexual harassment.
Last December, a kindergartner was accused of sexual harassment after he pinched a classmate's bottom at Lincolnshire Elementary School in Hagerstown, according to the local paper, the Herald-Mail. The charge will remain on his record until he enters middle school. "It's important to understand a child may not realize that what he or she is doing may be considered sexual harassment, but if it fits under the definition, then it is, under the state's guidelines," school spokeswoman Carol Mowen told the Herald-Mail. "If someone has been told this person does not want this type of touching, it doesn't matter if it's at work or at school, that's sexual harassment."
In fact, the Maryland Department of Education defines sexual harassment as "unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and/or other inappropriate verbal, written or physical conduct of a sexual nature directed toward others." I am alarmed that Mowen's statement appears to imply that schools will find a child guilty of sexual misconduct even if the child doesn't understand the implications of his or her actions.

In closing, Linda Starr, a former teacher and writer states: It has to stop, says the American Bar Association, which has passed a resolution opposing, "in principle, 'zero tolerance' policies that have a discriminatory effect, or mandate either expulsion or referral of students to juvenile or criminal court, without regard to the circumstances or nature of the offense or the student's history."

It has to stop, says Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance, a Phi Delta Kappan article, which states, "Zero tolerance was developed in response to legitimate concerns that cannot be ignored. However, when the solution creates more difficulty than the original problem, it is time to abandon it for something better."

It has to stop, says Harvard University's Civil Rights Project in "Opportunities Suspended: The Devastating Consequences of Zero Tolerance and School Discipline Policies." "The exclusion of students from the educational process is a crisis of epidemic proportions; it has long-term implications not only for the students affected but also for our society as a whole."

It has to stop because zero tolerance, as enforced in too many schools today, is a policy that punishes the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It treats children as adult offenders without the presumption of innocence, disrupts the lives and educations of good students more often than it does those of troubled students, and treats all covered offenses and all students equally, regardless of age, intent, past behavior, or magnitude of the offense -- this list too could go on and on and on.

Source

Revisiting Megan's Law and Sex Offender Registration:
Prevention or Problem
Robert E. Freeman-Longo, MRC, LPC,/center>