What concerns me about tis legislation - does it define what is means by "Disruptive, aggressive and anti-social behaviors"?
What you describe with wee, is YOUR description. As parents of difficult children also, we can see the frightened, panicked child who is acting out of panic and desperation. But an observer who is only seeing a problem child may view his behaviour as dangerous, aggressive, disruptive and anti-social. It is very subjective.
What it boils down to, is what was wee's intent? Aggressive seems to me to be a matter of intent, if the person is trying to intimidate with his behaviour. It could be argued that wee was trying to force the principal to get out of his way and therefore was being intimidating. Although I find it hard to see a small frightened child succeeding in intimidating a grown, experienced man.
Disruptive and anti-social - yes, a difficult child can be disruptive without even trying. Having a kid throw a tantrum can be disruptive to a classroom. having a teacher announce earlymarks all round could also be disruptive - you would get the kids cheering and getting excited, no work being done. That's what I mean - how do they define "disruptive"?
Similarly with anti-social - does the kid picking his nose in the corner or nervously, constantly holding on to the front of his shorts, get described as behaving antisocially? What about a kid who prefers to sit alone on the steps rather than join in with the other students playing a game in the playground? Surely that is antisocial?
This strikes me as a law that was written based on a general idea but never really tested properly, not tested to the level of being properly refined and defined.
Testing time, I think.
If the law says that the option closest to what has happened is only a 3 day suspension, the question then becomes - can the school board mandate a 10 day suspension under these circumstances?
I sort of get the feeling that the attitude is, "We are the school board. By definition, is we say so, then you must comply."
This attitude happens in various responsible committees around the world. There was a story I was told about 25 years ago, of a Sydney council (like a district board) who had a health and safety question to sort out, so they passed a motion in the meeting (in other words someone proposed it, someone else seconded it, then they voted on this - amazing) that carbon dioxide is lighter than air. Now scientists know that carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Passing a council law does not repeal the law of gravity.
In the same way, the school board can mandate all it likes, but some things are just plain wrong and the school board is answerable to higher authority. They seem to have missed this point.
Some of the most important of laws are those relating to human rights. The right to food, shelter, to life, to education are vital. The right to not be discriminated against due to disability is also a human right which still needs to be enforced in some parts of the world. Anti-discrimination is not straightforward everywhere. But countries like Australia and the US claim to enforce anti-discrimination. That means that if anybody in your country tries to pass a rule that you feel is discriminatory, than that rule is likely to be unenforcable, since the higher law (antidiscrimination) over-rides it.
A thought - how long is SpEd going to be away? Is it 5 days?
And another thought, Shari - we had to accept that difficult child 3 was unable to cope in mainstream. At least for a while. We probably could put him back in mainstream now. But we realised that to continue to force the issue, even when we finally had a supportive school where bullying was not only not allowed, it was actively tromped on, we still couldn't make it work.
Now in our case we had the luxury of me being able to stay home and supervise difficult child 3's correspondence education. But it still would be in wee's interests (maybe) as well as the school's interests, to put wee in surroundings which are less stressful for all concerned. There may be another option that could take the heat out of school for wee, and the heat out of wee for the school.
difficult child 3 has correspondence classmates whose parents work. There are ways to work around a problem. At the moment, it seems that nobody in the school is really looking long-term to what can help wee. Instead, it's a matter of lurching from crisis to crisis.
Definitely time to "prod buttock" gently but firmly.
Marg
