Readers Speak Out on the Case of Suspended Cell Phone User
The story of the Suspended Cell Phone Student has remained a hot topic with some bloggers questioning the actions of the student and many more commenters dumping on the actions of the school officials.
For example, a commenter named subpatre questioned just about everything we wrote. I have indented my comments and his comments are in italics. (click on the link to the original story to see subpatre’s post uncommented).
Ahh, the Sins of Ommission(tm). Independent Sources said:”[the] teacher walks up while he’s on the phone and tells him to turn it off. …he refuses and is awarded with a 10-day suspension.”
Convenient partial truths: the teacher told boy to hang up, boy told the teacher who was on the phone, explaining the reason for refusal. Teacher then attempts to grab the phone from his hand. At that point –physical agression by the school, a legal assault– profanity should be expected. Be grateful he doesn’t prosecute the criminal charge.
- I don’t think that profanity directed at a teacher is ever expected or tolerated on a high school campus. Not sure if confiscation of a cell phone is really considered assault either.
- From CNN: “The suspension was really incidental to the telephone. It was the behavior of the student, using profanity, screaming at the teacher,” said John Phillips Jr., superintendent for the Muscogee County School District. “He became very belligerent and very threatening to her” when she asked him to turn over the phone, Phillips said.
- Of course, the school administration could be lying, but somehow I believe their version of story over his.
IS said “[T]he school is bombarded with calls and emails threatening them”Not true. Lots of condemnations, not one threat. More rhetorical garbage. Well-deserved criticism is not ‘threats’.
- You are correct. In follow-up the “threats” statement came from a comment in a blog and cannot be collaborated. It should not have been referenced in my post. (That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “criticism”you refer to included some rather salacious terms.)
It’s correct that there were –in retrospect– many other options that would have settled this incident. The teacher could have asked to speak to, (verify) Kevin’s Mom; not assault him. The secretary could have let him keep the phone instead of taking it away. The school could have acknowledged the truth that it was Kevin’s mother (verified) instead of trying to claim otherwise. In this post, with plenty of time for retrospect, the whole truth still isn’t told.
- Again, we disagree on your use of the word “assault”. A female teacher took a phone from a 17 year old male. Unless I missed something, she didn’t beat him over the head with it after grabbing it.
- And most importantly, Kevin could have cooled it with the profane language thereby taking the issue away from the use of the phone and instead to his conduct.
No, what we have here is an administration that went lockstep in mindlessly enforcing an arbitrary rule. Shame on them and shame on ‘Independent Sources’. Hooray for the commonsense public’s common sense.
- I do not agree that the “no cell phone” rule is schools arbitrary and many school districts have them.
- Should there be exceptions. Sure. But those get hard to monitor. Mothers in Iraq? Sure! What about sisters and brothers? Sure! How about when Mom is in Afghanistan? How about little sister needs to be picked up after school. Exceptions get very hard to police so you do hope for common sense and this is where you and I disagree. In my mind I picture a teacher walking up and telling Kevin to hand over the phone at which point Mr. Francois starts cussing at her. After that point it ceases to be about the phone. He says he didn’t cuss at that point and the teacher and admin staff say he did.
PS – So what about his GPA? You really want to go there? Is it just a insinuated slur, or does this school regularly break the rules for the (high GPA) teachers’ pets?
- A slur? Come on. The administration publicly said that Francois’ behavior has been a “chronic problem.”
The idea of my post was not to support mind-numbing rigidity and rule mongering in schools. If you read any of our postings on education you can see that we are strongly for rule changes allowing the termination of educators that don’t deliver (curbing tenure), reform, and for giving students more choice in picking which schools they go to and in having more say in how those schools run (charter schools). I only wrote the post after seeing post after post hold this kid up as a victim of circumstance out of his control when in fact the way I see it was very much in his control.
Similar Independent Sources posts:
- Suspended Cell Phone Student’s Behavior Deserving of an F: By now you've all heard the story. A young student (Kevin Francois) is talking to his mom on the cell phone. She's a sergeant currently serving in Ira ...
- You Think California Charter Schools Are Working? Not If You Skim The Los Angeles Times: The Los Angeles Times has a remarkably balanced piece by Jeam Merl on two analyses of charter school performance -- one statewide and one for the LAUS ...
- Sex education in school; 3-way action in principal’s offiice: How times have changed from when I was a kid when being sent to the principal's office meant that you might get a lecture or perhaps a spanking. No f ...
- American Schools Gone Wild: Drugs, Drag and Fondling (and that’s just the teachers and administration): In the last week alone, a teacher was caught SMS'ing cops for pot, a principal was caught in his office watching gay porn while sitting butt-ass naked ...
- Charter School Foot-draggers Lose A Battle: Eduwonk pointed us to this story that we missed: In a major victory for charter schools, an appeals court has ruled the Kern County School District mu ...
May 13th, 2005 at 7:18 am
Wow, this is an interesting debate. I must have missed hearing about this cellphone confiscation in the news, however,
May 13th, 2005 at 7:21 am
(sorry about the double post, I accidentally clicked enter after typing that…)
based on the comments here, I really wonder the age of subpatre. I imagine that if he is close to H.S.-age-range, then it is easier for him to over-dramatize the “assault” of the student, and overlook the verbal assailment of the teacher by the student.
May 13th, 2005 at 9:58 pm
Nice Fisking, but you still got it wrong.
I.S. says: “somehow I believe their version of story over his”, and later “In my mind I picture a teacher…”.
?These are core problems. First is to deal with the facts we do know, not imagine them as you suggest. The school’s version substantially supports the student’s statements. The administration’s version just doesn’t include some key details, like the phone grabbing that precipitated the event. Further the admin’s version implies a number of things that are…. well… just plain sleazy.
They initially claimed the call may not have been the students’ mother. The local paper verified it was the Mother, both from contacting the Mother in Iraq and from the student’s cell-phone memory. Ooops! A)The school apparently felt the true facts weren’t important, B) but had to comment on it anyway. It’s either a ‘white-lie’ if they really didn’t know, it’s sleazy CYA lying if they did know.
?The school’s version doesn’t include that the teacher physically grabbed a telephone in the student’s hand; but it doesn’t preclude it either. That’s a significant point: “A person commits the offense of simple battery when he or she either:
(1) Intentionally makes physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature with the person of another;” Georgia Code. Assault (the threatening of battery) is an included offense.
The teacher went over the line; grabbing the phone held in a student’s hand so that the connection was lost qualifies under GA common law. Teacher should have known better; but even common sense, respect or courtesy dictates acting better too. If you were on an important call with your cell-phone and I demand, then grab the phone; don’t pretend the cops won’t be called. I’d expect some not-quite-nice language too, even if it’s not absolutely needed.
?Another sleazy tactic was the administration ‘letting slip’ that the student had past behavior problems. They, nor anyone else, can go further under privacy law. The administration knows that, it’s a basic records privacy tenet. Yet they provided no equivalent information about the past behavior(s) of the teacher who sparked the incident. Wonder why?
Does the teacher have problems from being bounced from Baker Middle School (Computer) to Spencer HS (Computer) to Spencer HS (English)? Did the student react to her large threatening appearance or trigger something by refering to her weight problem? [This paragraph is a sleazy counter-illustration of the school's sleazy tactic]
I.S. said: “I do not agree that the “no cell phone” rule is schools arbitrary and many school districts have them.”
?So what? It doesn’t matter if you think the moon is green cheese… even if many others think so too! The rule is arbitrary by the school’s own admission. The rule is “designed to preserve instructional time and decorum in our schools”. Yet cell-phones are allowed to students in band, chorus, or athletic activities; IOW all the ‘nice kids’, teacher’s pets and jocks….. ostensibly to facilitate transportation after school.
Phone calls from overseas parents are only allowed with special pre-arranged permission, yet the administration never told any students the fact unless asked first. That is arbitrary. So is this particular enforcement during lunch-time, with no ‘instructional time and decorum’ to be preserved. The school’s policy is so obviously flawed that the school Board is changing it, admitting it’s a poor system.
?The bottom line is professional educators have to meet a higher standard than the children they teach; and this school failed both the student and the public. The student deserves some punishment for his abusive behavior; but the teacher who started it deserves punishment too. The administrators (two individuals) who did the CFYA dance, took sides before facts were known, and subsequently lied need to find jobs elsewhere.
I have mixed feelings about erasing the incident from the student’s record, but agree with the school board that:
“…the student wouldn’t have reacted rudely if the staff didn’t mishandle the incident, said board member John Wells of District 2. “We need to apologize for the situation and move on instead of trying to cover,” he said.
“It’s one thing to say sorry, but we also need to show it,” said board member Joseph Roberson of District 7.”
May 16th, 2005 at 11:48 am
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May 16th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the “assault and battery” aspects of this incident. I would hope the court of common sense would laugh at someone really characterizing a teacher grabbing a phone out of someone’s hands as an assault. I’d love to be on that jury.
I agree that it was sleazy to release information about the Kevin’s past behavioral problems. Not cool. However no one seems to be denying that the statement wasn’t accurate.
At the end of the day, the real question is how is Kevin is going to respond to all of this. If he says, ” life sucks, people are mean to me, ‘teacher’s pets’ get all the breaks, my behavior and grades are not my fault, etc., then I think we know the way that the story is going to end. If instead, he respondes by showing that he is a better person than has been indicated by this and other incidents, and he does this by turning himself around, then good for him. That will be the most effective way to show how the school and its administration was so far off base.
All of the school board quotes you listed are just PR hack coverage while this is the topic of the day. It will all be forgotten. The important thing is what Kevin is going to do. And unless you are him or know what’s going on in his mind, then we’ll both just have to wait and see.
May 16th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
What’s the matter with being in school band?