Florida teen takes Mom’s car to school, gets expelled.
Updated 03 May 2004: Conroy still expelled but will be allowed to do everything except attend school. (At bottom of post)
Stun gun discovery puts senior’s end-of-year plans into question
“Zero Tolerance” = Ethically Inert
Amanda Conroy had some car trouble so took her mother’s car to school. That happened to be the day that police did a random search of students’ cars. Inside her mother’s Durango was her mother’s stun gun.
Amanda described the day as progressing in a kind of surreal fashion, as school administrators explained the zero-tolerance policy for any weapons found on campus.
Bob Conroy said his daughter’s punishment increased throughout the day as he talked to an assistant principal, the principal and then an assistant superintendent: from a five-day suspension with no prom, to a 10-day suspension with no graduation ceremony, to expelled from school and no diploma.
Conroy claims that Assistant Superintendent Michele Lugo told him things would go better for Amanda if he didn’t hire a lawyer or go to the media. Lugo denies this and also states that Amanda can graduate if she finishes her scholastic requirements in an alternative education program.
The parents were unsure on Wednesday what their daughter will do.
…
She’s now worried about her English honors paper being due on Friday, worth so much of her total grade she’ll fail the course without it. And there’s the finals for her economic honors and child care and advance placement psychology classes.“I truly feel there needs to be an appeal process,” said School Board member Pat Carroll, who’s pushed to change the strict policy. “I can’t support expelling the young lady.”
Carroll will address the district’s zero-tolerance policy during the board’s May 6 public meeting. She envisions an appeal board made up of district administrators who could overturn expulsions such as Amanda’s.
I think it would be better served by an appeals board of volunteer parents and students. After all, it’s the district administrators who are making up these policies in the first place.
(Tip credit to John Bedient)
UPDATE
Senior in trouble for having stun gun can go to prom
Amanda Conroy was allowed to go to her prom, will be allowed to take the final exam in her AP Psychology class and will be allowed to graduate with her class. She’s still expelled and will complete the last couple of weeks of the school year at their alternate education facility. Given that she’s being allowed to participate in all of the end of year ceremonies, the school system insisting on removing her from school seems even more ludicrous.
(Tip credit to Best of the Web)
As this is a public school and school district, operated by the state, it is covered under the due process provisions of the United States Constitution. They have to notify her (and her parents) of the charges, hold a hearing in front of a impartial panel, AND have an appeals process. I would be taking this school district to court (criminal, for the violation of civil rights, and civil).
Unfortunately not, Anthony. Students are not accorded the same rights as adults. Loci parentis gives the school system the authority to do many things that would be violations of civil liberties if they did them to you or I.
Sorry Jim, but students have the same rights as any other adults. Amanda is 18 and is an adult. Whether she is a student or not is beside the point. She is an adult in school or out. Therefore she certainly has far more recourse to the courts than most of her fellow students. I hope she sues the blackboards off of those tyranical school administrators.
And what about the search itself? What is the probable cause for it? I don’t believe it is an administrative search, and it’s far too thorough and invasive to qualify as a Terry stop, or a check point. Can the suspension be attacked based on the fact that the government violated her 4th amendment rights in order to find the item that they base their case for suspension on?
/wondering
Unfortunately that’s just not the case, Bruce. By attending that school she became just as bound by the rules, regulations and laws as any other student. Those force a legal second class upon students. I wish it weren’t that way but it is.
As far as justification for the search, there needn’t be any. Various courts have reaffirmed over and over again that a school does not need probable cause in order to institute a search. About the only thing they need to abide by is making sure that their targets are not selected in prejudicial fashion. In this particular case, the vehicle was indicated as hot by a drug searching dog. It was a false positive but the selection of the vehicle for search was legally justified.
Tragically, Jim is right. She is subject to a different set of rules altogether, due to her status as a school student. It matters not that she is of age.
This “zero tolerance” stuff came about because there was a time when public school administrators excerised judgement in such cases and that that judgement was named “racist” due to quota outcomes in punishments. Here is how it happened. Back in the l970’s and l980’s a high school principal took into account, a student’s intent in cases of violation of rules and punished accordingly. So in this case, the white girl would have been suspeneded but not expelled because her intent was not to use the stun gun. However, the same prinicipal might expell a black male, known to be involved with a gang, for carrying a gun in school. Race baiters jumped on this “inequality” and soon prinicpals stopped expelling everybody because it was not safe to punish without being denounced and punished as a “racist.”
After the schools blew up into uncontrolable crime and violence, by the late l980’s, zero tolerance was instituted. It is mindless punishment without “racist” judgement. The Left calls it “equality.”
Just thought we should all remember the track record here and how this current state of oppression came about.
Whith school administrators drifting further into a delusional state perhaps it’s time for someone to again press the whole legal issue. Is that based on her presence on school property, her status as a student at the school, or some combination of both? Public universities have already been told quite clearly by the courts that their internal speech codes cannot superscede the constitution. Why should a HS have any special status or authority, and who could grant such authority when they don’t have it either?
It is interesting… students that attend school aren’t there by choice. They do not agree to these tyrannical rules as part of a contract, and neither do their parents. They are there, because it is the law. They go to these public schools by default. If you want to get out of these tyrannical schools, you have to jump through prohibitive hoops (paying a ton of extra money in the case of private schools, or taking up a second job as a teacher, and begging the government to approve your cirriculum for your own kid in the case of home schooling.) Not everybody can afford this (taxed to pay for the public schools whether or not they will send their kid there), so they have to put up with it.
Since neither the kids nor parents have a choice in whether or not their kid goes to school, one would think that in a perfect world, constitutional protections would be given to students forced to attend government schools.
Alas, this is not a perfect world.
FYI….you do NOT need a curriculum to homeschool nor put it to the Gov’s for approval.
Thought I just mention that here along the lines…
There are certain states where it is very difficult to homeschool. There is a case in PA now where the parents object to the school’s approval of their curriculum so it’s going to court.
Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts are very difficult to homeschool in. The state has a lot to say about parents’ curriculum choices in these three states.
LW, I am not sure what state you live in, but in most states, you need to prove that you are actually teaching your kids, and you have to teach them what the government thinks they need to learn.
Here is what parents who homeschool have to deal with in Maryland:
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/laws/blMD.htm
In Georgia.No big deal AT ALL.All we have to do it file and intent to homeschool and once a month an attendence form.Every three years,starting afdter third grade we need to test the kids,results are only for us.In Georgia they are NEVER allowed to ask for anything nor are teaching parents EVER or can they EVER be requiered to show anything.
You can read it here.We are homeschooling too.
http://www.ghea.org
Georgia apears to be homeschool paradise.
The law has even been changes to where you can have someone else teach your kids,as long as that person has a GED/Highschool Diploma.At first a person other then you (a tutor) had to have at least a bachelors.
My friend homeschooled at first in Ohio,now she’s moved to New York…no problems there either.
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I understand that schools have the legal authority to randomly search students’ cars (unfortunately). But aren’t police supposed to get a search warrant?
I can’t believe she doesn’t sue the school. She’s 18 and has every right to hire a lawyer and sue them. If more students fought back, schools would think twice before pulling this shit.
The need for a warrant varies greatly by locality. In most areas anything found by the school in a valid search may be turned over to the police. What constitutes a valid search differs greatly depending upon where you are. In other jurisdictions the police themselves may legally search and sieze without a warrant when they are functioning as the agents of the school.
i believe that this was an accident. no one was ever in danger. no harm was ment.the school was definitly wrong by expelling her. this could happen to any of us.