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Now this is some off the wall ridiculousness right here. A Fairfax County girl was given a two-week suspension and a recommendation for expulsion because she was "caught" taking her birth control pill during lunch last month. Of course, the school's side of the matter is that there is a zero-tolerance policy in the school for any kind of pill -- the Post reports that students are subject to possible expulsion if they bring "any 'controlled substance' or addictive drug regulated by the federal government" on to school grounds. (I'll remember to keep my Advil at home the next time I'm on school grounds in the Commonwealth, then, lest someone with a headache gets expelled.) The teen that was suspended -- an honor student and a letterman, no less -- studied the handbook on drugs and found that not only would her punishment been less if she had been caught with heroin, but that her two-week suspension was the same punishment if she had brought a gun to school. It's understandable that the school wants to curb prescription drug abuse by students, but their blanket reaction to the issue sets a very dangerous precedent -- not to mention the message it sends to other students who might not care to have the school system as a mediator in choices they and their parents make regarding their sexual health. Mark Fisher's column today also covers a similar case -- a Fairfax student caught with marijuana for the second time was threatened with possible expulsion. Sadly, as a result, Josh Anderson took his own life. If these two cases aren't justification enough to take a second look at the rules, I'm not sure what is.
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Does that include diabetes medication? Ritalin? Anti depressants? All federally controlled substances that could be crucial to a child's life.
Yeah pretty much. Typically the school administration has to know about any prescriptions students are taking, and I believe a school nurse has to actually administer them if at school.
Really this is nothing new. I didn't have to take any "controlled substances" when I was in school, but I vaguely remember having to go to the nurse for something as simple as to get a pain killer. This case has nothing to do with the fact that it was a birth control pill. See this article about similar ridiculousness.
Agreed. This CYA stuff has been endemic for decades around here. Kelly5612 pretty much nailed the reasons.
jasong is right, students with medication that should be taken during school hours keep a supply at the nurses' office and drop by before or after lunch to take their pills, check their insulin level, and so on. School nurses also have Tylenol and ibuprofen on hand.
The punishment may be harsh and perhaps administrators can revisit the policy but I'm not sympathetic to this girl. It doesn't take a honors student to realize that breaking a rule in front of everyone is a bad idea. If she'd, oh I don't know, swallowed her pill in the bathroom she'd still be at school.
I am sympathetic to the girl, because even if what she did wasn't the smartest thing, this punishment is totally disproportionate (and perhaps she didn't even know about the "no pills of any sort" policy--in my HS, that sort of thing was buried in 30 pages of legalese at the front of the student handbook and nobody ever read it). She's a high schooler who didn't take the time to adequately prepare herself to break a truly idiotic policy, and she's being threatened with expulsion?
That sounds like an argument that would come from, oh, I don't know, the same person that would argue for abstinence only education, or oh, I don't know, prohibiting minors from taking birth control or using contraception.
How ridiculous. She shouldn't need to "walk away" to take the pill. She shouldn't have to go to the school nurse to ask for her pill, and she shouldn't be punished so irresponsibily and disproportionately for her "crime".
Oh please. Click this link to see that her mother already knew she was on BC, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/04/AR2009040402591.html. And then check jasong's link to see that this isn't about BC anyway.
The argument that she needs to go to the bathroom to take the pill is an argument from someone that thinks its stupid to flagrantly violate the rules in a room full of staff. So how about she (or anyone taking Tylenol, or cold medication, or whatever) be a little discrete and avoid this mess.
She wants to change policy? Great! But I doubt this was some kind of contentious civil disobedience.
School administrators are brainless idiots. That's news?
Yes, school administrators are idiots...for going into a no-win profession where every dumbass policy gets pinned on them.
School admin don't sit around a conference room making up these dumbass rules for the hell of it. Trust me, they have much better things to do. These policies are almost always CYA reactions to a parent either threatening to or actually suing for some dumbass reason, like "It's your fault my kid's peddling Xanax [he pilfered from my purse] because you shouldn't have allowed it in school."
Not to mention the kid who gets sick from receiving a pill of any origin from another kid. That, according to the community, is the school's fault, too. The only solution is a dumbass, unrealistic, CYA policy like this one, where all pills, of any origin, are banned all the time. Not coincidentally, there is a direct correlation between the amount of lawyer-parents in a community and the number of dumbass policies in effect at the local schools (hello...Fairfax?). And God help you if you have students from the worst combo possible: the lawyer-psychologist-parent trifecta. Hooooboy, how fast can you say "due process"?
So, now that you hopefully have a little deeper understanding into how education policies get made, particularly the ones that address student behavior, the label of "idiot" should be a shared one.
Sorry, but Supernintendo Chalmers and Principal Skinner are far closer to the truth of what school administrators are like than your defensive posturing would have any simpleminded person to believe.
So, your erudite opinions of how educational decisions are made comes from...The Simpsons. I choose to formulate mine from a decade+ of teaching in both urban and suburban districts. Okay, I concede: you win the simpleminded trophy, BC.
I went to high school in Fairfax County & was once given in-school suspension (aka a Saturday morning gardening and sitting in silence in the cafeteria) for taking chewable vitamin C tablets. In those days, if you were on any Rx or OTC meds, your parents had to register them with the school nurse and they were kept in the nurse's office so you could stop by in the 4 minutes you had between classes and take your pills.
Regardless, this punishment seems extremely harsh & I would seriously doubt that the school's over-reaction has nothing to with the fact that she was taking birth control pills. Frankly, I don't see how this student's taking pills affects anyone but herself. Remember kids, as far as most school systems are concerned, sex is bad. God forbid we teach kids how to protect themselves properly.
As usual, life imitates 7th Heaven. So ahead of its time.
Why didn't she pop her pill with breakfast?
I'd guess that she isn't doing that for the same reason she didn't have her parents register the prescription with the school nurse so it could have it doled out within the rules: perhaps the parents don't want her to take the pill?
If so, her taking the medication in the school bathrooms may be the only way for her to use the birth control of her choice... and that's what differentiates the birth control case from the controlled substances mentioned.
On the bright side, she's now the most popular girl in school.
I have zero tolerance for "zero tolerance" policies. They are always wrong, and especially in an educational institution where thinking should be valued rather than a mindless one-size-fits-all policy application. That's not only why we don't have the death penalty for speeding, or even the death penalty for all kinds of homicide.
Yes, this girl violated school policy for taking drugs without following the school rules, but expulsion for that is insane.
Indeed. There was a local case here where a child brought a cake to school, and the grandmother also packed a knife for the teacher to cut the cake.
The teacher cut the cake and everyone was eating.. then the teacher told the student she had brought a deadly weapon to school and had to report to the principal. She was all set to have an expulsion hearing... until the family contacted the press. Then it was "oops! sorry!"
Ridiculous.
At first glance, yeah, this is a ridiculous policy.
But then....hasn't this been done before? An honors student looking for some reason to challenge the rules so they can have a great paper or issue to talk about for their college applications or get their name in the news in some way? I'm pretty sure I've seen similar stories..
If this isn't an attention-getting ploy, then she should have been smart and taken the pill at home, like every other woman on the planet. Who carries their packet WITH THEM every day??
Who carries their packet with them every day? High school students who need to take their pill at the same time every day, and don't know if they're going home that night or not. If they go to a friends house after school, they wont have their BC, and they sure as hell wont be going home soon enough to take it at the right time of day.