In November 1998 Jordan Locke, a five–year–old attending Curtisville Elementary School in Deer Lakes, Pennsylvania “was suspended for wearing a 5–inch plastic axe as part of his firefighter’s costume to a Halloween party in his classroom” (Skiba, 2000). In their response to upset firefighters who criticized the suspension, school officials drafted an “Open Letter to Firemen Across the Country” stating “that they never intended to offend firefighters by referring to the axe as a weapon, but defended the zero tolerance policy against weapons as fair”(p. 4).
In May 1999 a sophomore in Pensacola, Florida loaned her nail clippers with an attached nail file to a friend. When the teacher saw this, she confiscated the clippers. The girl, aspiring to be a doctor, was given a 10–day suspension by the principal and threatened with expulsion, with the principal adding, “Life goes on. You learn from your mistakes. We are recommending expulsion” (Skiba, 2000, p. 4).
There are other stories like these in Florida and throughout the United States. Websites are dedicated to highlighting the injustices resulting from zero tolerance policies and calling for an end to them (www.thisistrue.com, www.ztnightmares.com, www.texaszerotolerance.com).
One example of a non–violent youth whose life was forever changed as a result of a school district enforcing a zero tolerance policies mandated by the GFSA of 1994 is of the high school senior in Knoxville, Tennessee who was expelled in 1999 after a friend left a knife in his car (Potts, Njie, Detch, & Walton, 2003). Apparently despondent after being expelled during his senior year in high school, the student committed suicide. The parents of the boy sued the Knox County School Board and eventually won their case when the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the expulsion was irrational and absent of any evidence that the student was aware of the knife’s presence in his car. The judge, however, did not challenge the existence of zero tolerance policies. For some educational leaders, this holding reaffirmed their belief that there was nothing wrong with zero tolerance policies. Other politicians and educational leaders in Tennessee, however, began to question the decade–old federal law (Potts, Njie, Detch, & Walton, 2003).
Zero tolerance, as it relates to behavior and discipline, has been defined as “the policy or practice of not tolerating undesirable behavior, such as violence or illegal drug use, with the automatic imposition of severe penalties even for first offenses” (Potts, Njie, Detch, & Walton, 2003, p. 16). This definition provides an opportunity for school boards and principals to expand the boundaries in which a behavior can be subjected to a zero tolerance policy simply by their labeling the behavior undesirable. Having such an all–encompassing definition for zero tolerance is the precise reason why so few lawyers will accept cases involving parents or students challenging zero tolerance policies. Zero tolerance policies and definitions can be so encompassing that judges often rule any behavior that school districts deem undesirable as punishable behaviors that are within the legislative boundaries of the law and therefore subject to severe penalties. In February 2001, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution opposing all zero tolerance policies on the ground that the policies pay no “regard to the circumstances or nature of the offense or the student’s history” (Potts, et al., 2003, p. 16).
The U.S. Department of Education defines zero tolerance weapons’ policies in two separate documents: Sec. 14601 of the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act (ESEA)––Gun–Free Requirements (otherwise known as the GFSA of 1994, a component of the Improving American’s Schools Act of 1994) and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) Sec. 4141 of 2001 (Potts, et al., 2003). The GFSA defines the following: each State receiving Federal funds under this Act shall have in effect a State law requiring local educational agencies to expel from school for a period of not less than one year a student who is determined to have brought a weapon to a school under the jurisdiction of local educational agencies in that State, except that such State law shall allow the chief administering officer of such local educational agency to modify such expulsion requirement for a student on a case–by–case basis. (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Safe and Drug–Free Schools, 2006, ¶ 2)
