One mother is furious after her 5-year-old daughter was reportedly forced to sign a "suicide contract" at school.
The mother, named Rebecca, told Alabama outlet WPMI-TV that the incident occurred after her kindergarten daughter drew a picture that resembled a gun and pointed a crayon at another student and said "pew pew." Authorities at E.R. Dixon Elementary school made the child sign a contract stating she would not kill herself or harm anyone else.
Rebecca said that while she was in the lobby waiting to pick up her child, “they had my 5-year-old sign a contract about suicide and homicide … There should be a different way to handle this situation. If this is protocol it needs to be looked at again." Rebecca added that she did not think her daughter knew what the words in the contract even went.
Mobile County school system superintendent Martha Peek told the Alabama Media Group that staff at the elementary school used the district wide procedure for when "a student indicates they may be considering any actions such as hurting themselves or hurting someone else." However, she noted that the incident will be evaluated and that the policy "will be reworked."
"I think if we had stepped back and looked at the situation and that others could have been involved -- if the principal had known about it -- we could have probably had some additional guidance," Peek told the outlet.
Peek told The Huffington Post that she has not been in touch with the mother since hearing about the incident, but she intends to meet with her and “reassure mom that everything is fine and her child is going to be well taken care of.”
Recently, schools around the country have taken a tough approach to children who play with fake guns or draw fake guns. A young student was famously suspended in 2013 after chewing a pop tart into the shape of a gun.
*************************
WTF, school district? It's insane.
__________________
"I never understood why blessings wore disguises. If I were a blessing, I'd run around naked." - Sophia Petrillo
Kids play "shoot each other" games all the time... doesn't mean they are going to kill someone or themselves. This is over-reaction on a planetary sized scale...
__________________
"Yabba Dabba Doo" - Frederick J. Flintstone... So what?
(Judd Nelson as Atty. Robin 'Stormy' Weathers in "From the Hip")
I think it's dumb, but I also think schools have been successfully sued and they have to cover themselves in these ways. Our schools are less in the business of educated and more in the business of catering to special interest groups and trying to avoid being sued.
It's easy to point our fingers at situations like this and roll our eyes, but now schools are paying more attention to students' emotional well being, and have more resources to deal with a genuinely troubled student who needs help.
__________________
Page 1 of 1 sorted by
Invisapeeps 2.0 -> Chattin' Peeps -> 5-Year-Old Student Reportedly Asked To Sign 'No Suicide' Contract After Misbehaving