Reason 757 to HomeSchool: Child Not Forced to Remove MedicAlert Bracelet Due to Zero Tolerance Policy
No children in the first grade are allowed to wear any jewelry when they play tag. Not even a medic-alert bracelet. If the kids fall over dead due to asthma at least the paramedics won’t have to worry about owies caused by snagged jewelry.
From the TorontoSun here:
Three strikes and you’re out.
Tracey Brown’s daughter, Tianna, said she had to take off her MedicAlert bracelet during her Grade 1 gym class because jewelry was not allowed.
It was the third time this school year that Tianna, who has asthma, has been told by staff at Brampton’s Westervelts Corners Public School to remove the bracelet.
“I’m disgusted because my daughter’s health is at risk and they’re not taking it seriously,” said Brown, 38. If she were to collapse, the mom said, the response team would need to take extra time to determine Tianna’s problem without seeing the bracelet.
A supply teacher told her all jewelry had to come off, Brown said.
Her daughter had to remove the clasp with her teeth because no one would help her, she said. The other two incidents since September allegedly involved teaching staff telling the seven-year-old to cover the bracelet with a sweatband.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with this and I’ve lost it,” Brown said. “I’ve been calling the school, the board, trustees and the ministry. If it’s not going to become a policy, I’m not going to let this rest.”
If you can’t trust teachers to make common-sense simple judgements about whether or not to remove a medic-alert bracelet, how can you trust them unsupervised with any child much less your own? Zero tolerance policies do more damage than any good they were intended for.
A commenter on FARK suggested these simple steps to resolve the problem, and I agree completely.
1. Teach the kid to say NO
2. Teach the kid to be loud and belligerent about it
3. Once the kid is in the principal’s office call the media
4. Threaten school with a lawsuit
5. Everything will be fixed in less than an hour
i doubt it i am the mother accused of abuse for cuddling my child until she would accept that that she had to stay at the nursery and mummy would be back to pick her up later, and for telling her about c-section. my daughter was assaulted by her nursey nurse, i withdrew her from nursery telling the nursery reason. 26/11/09 we raised the assault matter with the police and we discovered the nursery had already been in talks with them between that time trying to frame us!
shahnaz.malik@btinternet.com