Louisiana School Threatens 9-Year-Old Boy with Expulsion for Having BB Gun During Virtual Class Reason.com

Ka Mauri Harrison is a nine-year-old boy in Harvey, Louisiana. Earlier this month, he was taking a social studies test during a virtual classroom session when one of his younger siblings entered the room and knocked over an unloaded toy BB gun. Harrison picked up the fake weapon, which made it briefly visible on screen.

Readers can probably guess what happened next: The district, Jefferson Pariah Schools, threatened Harrison with expulsion for having a lookalike weapon in class as if his home is now an extension of the school. The Washington Post reports that the expulsion was later reduced to a six-day suspension .

“This is an injustice. It’s a systemic failure,” Chelsea Cusimano, the family’s attorney, declared in a statement. “They’re applying on-campus rules to these children, even though they’re learning virtually in their own homes.”

Schools have doled out similarly harsh punishments to other students who inadvertently violated policies that don’t make any sense when applied to at-home instruction. Inflexibly taking a rules-are-rules approach to school discipline makes even less sense now than it did when kids were actually going to school. Dealing with Zoom-based learning is difficult enough; kids and parents shouldn’t have to worry about what might appear in the background. It’s an extra penalty on families that ha

via reason.com