School administrators are no longer limiting “no tolerance” to school campuses, now it’s being applied to what goes on off campus.
An appalling case out of Colorado Springs, Colorado where a 12-year-old boy has been suspended by his school for playing with a toy gun during a zoom class.
KDVR-TV reports on the case of 7th grader Isaiah Elliott:
On Thursday, Aug. 27, the seventh grader was attending on online art class when a teacher saw Isaiah flash a toy gun across his computer screen. The toy in question is a neon green and black handgun with an orange tip with the words “Zombie Hunter” printed on the side.
The teacher notified the school principal who suspended Isaiah for five days and called the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a welfare check on the boy without calling his parents first.
“It was really frightening and upsetting for me as a parent, especially as the parent of an African-American young man, especially given what’s going on in our country right now,” said Isaiah’s father, Curtis Elliott, in an exclusive interview with FOX31.
Curtis’ wife Dani Elliott was equally furious with the school’s decision to notify her, only after deputies were on their way to the family’s home.
“For them to go as extreme as suspending him for five days, sending the police out, having the police threaten to press charges against him because they want to compare the virtual environment to the actual in-school environment is insane…
If her main concern was his safety, a two-minute phone call to me or my husband could easily have alleviated this whole situation to where I told them it was fake,” said Dani Elliott.
In a released statement, the school district actually defended school administrators behavior, saying that all policies would be enforced regardless of whether "we are in-person learning or distance learning."
The district adds, “we take the safety of all our students and staff very seriously. Safety is always our number one priority."
The district tried to address the concerns with this Facebook post:
However the Elliotts say they are done with this school, they say they are pulling Isaiah out and sending him to a charter school.
This is similar to a case out of Maryland from back in June when a school sent the police to investigate a home after an administrator saw a BB gun in a boy’s bedroom during a virtual class.