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Little kids labeled as sexual harassers
Kids dealt with harshly as schools grapple to enforce zero-tolerance policies
By Brigid Schulte
The Washington Post
updated 2:15 a.m. ET, Thurs., April. 3, 2008
WASHINGTON - In his seven years, Randy Castro has been an aspiring soccer player, an accomplished Lego architect and a Royal Ranger at his Pentecostal church. He also, according to his elementary school record, sexually harassed a first-grade classmate.

During recess at his Woodbridge school one day in November, when he was 6, he said, he smacked the classmate's bottom. The girl told the teacher. The teacher took Randy to the principal, who told him such behavior was inappropriate. School officials wrote an incident report calling it "Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive," which will remain on his student record permanently.

Then, as Randy sat in the principal's office, they called the police.

"I thought they were going to take me to prison," Randy said recently. "I was scared."

Prince William County school officials would not comment on Randy's case, citing student confidentiality. They said the call to police was the result of a misunderstanding.

Randy is only one of many children to be dealt with harshly as schools across the country grapple with enforcing new zero-tolerance sexual harassment policies and the fear of litigation.

The Virginia Department of Education reported that 255 elementary students were suspended last year for offensive sexual touching, or "improper physical contact against a student." In Maryland, 166 elementary school children were suspended last year for sexual harassment, including three preschoolers, 16 kindergartners and 22 first-graders, according to the State Department of Education. Statistics for the District were not available.

Label 'doesn't make sense' for little kids
In 2006, a kindergartner in Hagerstown, Md., was accused of sexual harassment after pinching a female classmate's buttocks. A 4-year-old in Texas was given an in-school suspension after a teacher's aide accused him of sexual harassment for pressing his face into her breasts when he hugged her.

Ted Feinberg, assistant director of the National Association of School Psychologists in Bethesda, said he had never come across a case of sexual harassment in elementary school in his three decades in the schools. To label somebody a sexual harasser at 6 "doesn't make sense to me," he said. "Kids can be exploratory in behavior, they can mimic what they see on TV."

Randy sat on the lower bunk in his bedroom recently and explained what happened Nov. 26 on the playground at Potomac View Elementary School. Katherine DeLeon, a classmate who regularly came over to play, was kneeling on a bench, talking to friends. He said he saw another boy race over to the girl, whack her on the bottom and run away, giggling and pretending he hadn't done it. He did it twice more, Randy said.

Randy said he thought it looked like fun, so he joined in, hitting her and running away twice. "Every time he hit her, she laughed," Randy said. "When I hit her, she told the teacher."

Katherine's mother, Margarita DeLeon, who was contacted by school officials shortly after the incident, said that her daughter didn't like being hit but that she quickly forgot about it. "We didn't pay attention to it, because we know it's just children playing around," she said. "He didn't mean anything by it. I'm upset with the school."

Claudia Castro, a preschool teacher in Alexandria, said she was shocked when officials at Randy's school called to say that he was in trouble and that they were calling the police. She later met with the principal and assistant principal. "I told them that what he did was not appropriate. And I have talked to him about it. What I don't understand is how you can make a police report on a 6-year-old. But the principal told me that they were making reports to the police every single day."

The school's incident report, provided to The Washington Post by Randy's family, says the "police were contacted" after the playground episode. Police arrived after dismissal, when Randy had already gone home. Castro said she shared the story with The Post in the hope of changing school policy.

Confusion over police reports
Days before the incident, at a routine meeting with district officials, principals had been reminded to report threats and assaults to the police. "There was some confusion as to what level of threat and assault we were talking about," said Ken Blackstone, a school system spokesman.

Some officials and students said Potomac View administrators made an announcement that a new district policy required them to inform the police of student misbehavior. But Blackstone said there was no new policy. After the meeting, he said, principals were confused about when to call police. "As a result, there were too many calls that may not have been necessary because of people wanting to comply with the initial request."

"Some of the calls," Prince William police spokeswoman Ericka Hernandez said, "were about incidents the police did not have to be involved in."

Blackstone pointed to the school district's code of behavior, which states that police may be called for "offenses involving weapons, alcohol/drugs, intentional injury, and other serious violations."

Two school board members declined to comment on the case, and Blackstone would not make the Potomac View principal available for comment.

Mary Kay Sommers, president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, said suspensions and calls to the police in such cases are overkill. The correct response, she said, would be to explore whether the behavior is linked to abuse and to teach students about respecting peers and what constitutes "good touch" or "bad touch."

"There's no way these children understand what's going on. But it's been taken out of our hands. That's the difficult moral dilemma that we face," Sommers said. She blamed two Supreme Court decisions from the 1990s that enable suits against school districts for failing to stop sexual harassment as well as zero-tolerance policies aimed at middle and high school students that are applied to students as young as 5.

"We need to make sure that we follow the letter of the law, so being reasonable sometimes gets lost," she said.

But Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, said educators do have some leeway: "Zero tolerance does not mean zero good judgment."

Branded a 'bad boy'?
Since November, Randy has been calling himself a "bad boy," his mother said.

Castro said school officials rejected her appeal to remove the sexual harassment incident from Randy's permanent file. And now she worries that they have branded him a troublemaker.

She points to an incident in January when Randy was suspended for three days for verbal "harassment" and inappropriate behavior. According to the principal's incident report, as Randy walked home from school, he told two girls to kiss and asked another student, "Are you gay?" and "Why are you wearing girl's boots?"

Randy and his siblings, who were walking with him that day, dispute the account. They said he teased an older boy and girl about kissing. He said if the boy didn't kiss the girl, it meant he was gay. Randy said he learned the word on TV.

School officials, citing confidentiality, declined to comment on the incident.

Castro agreed that Randy's behavior was inappropriate but worried that he is being too severely scrutinized because of the spanking incident. "My feeling is that they are picking on him," she said.

Castro said she met again with school officials and asked why, if they were concerned about Randy, he wasn't in counseling. "The counselor told me he didn't need it," she said.


© 2008 The Washington Post Company
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23928454/

"zero tolerance" yet no paddles.

What's the point of zero tolerance. If we called the police every time someone does something wrong, particularly children, we will need to increase the police force 10 fold.

Can't we handle these issues on a case to case basis, and handle them in house?

Geez, we used to be able to fist fight in the hallways, and you got suspension and paddled. That was that, it was over. Now there's assault charges, expulsion, etc.

You know, I feel for the administrators. They HAVE to do it. If they don't, they get sued and are out of jobs. Congress has time for baseball players but they can't make time to reverse a completly ridiculous 0 tolerance policy. These cases should go on a one-by-one basis and as long as people can get rich off suing schools this will continue. Congress, stop worrying about what needles are up Clemens' butt and protect the future of your country.

So, what happens if the school calls the police in Georgia?

We learned from another thread that 13-under kids cannot be charged with a crime in Georgia. Now, we learn that kids in Washington can be labelled sex-offenders from 4 years old and up.

I think there might be a middle-ground somewhere in here that people are missing.

"zero tolerance" leads to "zero common sense"....

I love the message the kids get.. they are taught all day about foregiving classmates, apologizing, accepting other cultures, etc... and what is the schools policy? ZERO TOLERANCE.

Quote:

---

A 4-year-old in Texas was given an in-school suspension after a teacher's aide accused him of sexual harassment for pressing his face into her breasts when he hugged her.

---

OMG...How in the world is this freak allowed in a classroom? I think four year olds are kinda young to actually being able to sexually harrass adults.

but he's about 15 years from it becoming a natural reaction again.

Dear Lord, please protects us from our own stupidity.

At 4 or 7 years old this labeling is pretty stupid. And I don't think that this label will follow them around for the rest of their life---unless they keep on doing things that some consider inappropriate.

Now, with kids at this age that are pinching girlies bottoms--they should have to learn that that is unacceptable in a school environment---don't they. Cause lord knows that you can't be doing that in a workplace or even once you start to get to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.

While I see that this is somewhat pointless---I also don't think that this labeling is going to haunt kids going into the future, unless the kid never learns the lesson.

I always wonder where the hell these schools are when I read these types of reports. From my experience, kids do much, much worse and are hardly punished.

We had a kid in our school district who chased down a girl at recess, tackled her, told her that he was going to rape her, and that he had slept w/her "momma in his bed," before being pulled off of the girl.

He was put in ISS for a freaking day. His mother came in and went berserk, saying that her son's actions did not merit such a punishment. He was back in the general population the next day.


Something sounds fishy about this article to me.

And people are all up in arms over who is teaching home schooled children....

Once Upon a time, this country had common sense.

I am going to bring this up again. Cases like this are very rare. And when they occur, the media jumps all over it.

Why don't they report stories like the one I described? Do you guys realize how much kids get away with in school? It's nothing like when we went to school. There were consequences when you made a mistake. Today, administrators usually talk to the kid and send him back to class. Maybe they are afraid of the backlash of actually disciplining the children?

Let me tell you something.............there are way more victims at school from kids who are bullies or are downright weird than there are victims who have been treated unfairly by the schools.

Yet, these are the stories that make the headlines.

You know what...........crap like that pisses me off.

I'm all for bringing back the old wooden paddle to schools

Come on Tyler? What happened to the procedures where the child was told that it wasn't alright and then heard about it again when they got home from their parents (who were called concerning the incident) so that they could address it properly at home?

Welcome to the nanny-state.

That's my experience at my school.

They're very PC on many things. But when I send kids to the office, they usually just laugh saying that they like the Freshman Dean anyway and that they just talk to her and read a newspaper till the class gets out.

They also have a late start policy (HS starts at 840) which makes it very hard to give them detentions because parents go beserk when they find out they have to get their kid to school early because they won't shut up in class.

HS makes me feel like my arms are completley tied

That and the fact that i don't want to be a teacher anymore, it's miserable......

one of the many reasons I liked private school... little more open with the discipline.

Don't give up Petey.

There are a lot of negatives. The media sensationalizes stories like the one that started this thread and ignore the stories that happens thousands of times a day in our schools across the country. There are more and more bad parents. The enablers and those who neglect their children. The administration is pretty screwed up because their hands are tied and it has become more about politics and saving your ass than doing what is best for the majority. The politicians get involved to win votes, but don't have a clue about the reality of the situation. There are many kids who use the system. The pay sucks and many people don't even have a lot of respect for the profession. There is a lot of stress and the district and decision-makers are continually putting more on our plate. It is no wonder that 1 out of every 3 teachers in SC leave the profession w/in 5 years.

LOL........sounds bad, huh? Just know this. You are doing one of the most important jobs in the world. You have unbelievable influence on the future. You can mold youngsters into something good and therefore, you can help shape history. If you truly care about the kids, you will win them over. You don't need a particular style. I'm the type that makes them laugh all the time, but I am also very strict and the kids know not to cross the line. However, that isn't the only way. I know a lady who has never raised her voice and is very gentle, but she has the kids eating out of her hand. No one style is the answer. What matters is that you genuinely care about the kids and their future. And that you work your freaking ass off. Kids know when you aren't prepared. And you can't talk about work ethic if you aren't willing to go the extra mile. Kids also know if you are full of . They also know if you do care. They are very good at accepting honesty.

Petey, there is nothing like being out to eat and have a kid you either taught or coached come up to you and tell you and your family/friends what a great teacher/coach you were. There is nothing like how they remember your pet phrases. There is nothing like having a man or woman tell you that you made a huge difference in their life and that they still follow the things you taught them years ago.

I was back in Ohio last summer working on the house I still own up there. My daughter and I went out for a few beers. Inside, there were a group of six of my ex-football players. They had been drinking some and I wondered if I should take my daughter over when they saw me. Well......they went on and one. They were yelling some of my old phrases. *L*........."Crap, get on the line." "You're killin' me." etc. They told story after story. They said I was a tough SOB, but they wanted to win for me more than anything. One of them told my daughter that I was more of a father to him than his own dad was. That one still gets me choked up.

You wanna know something, Petey? My kids are in college now and every time they go out in Ohio, someone tells them a story about me. Someone tells them how much they loved having me as a teacher and/or a coach. My kids love that. It's a source of pride for them and damn Petey.........they think highly of me because of it. How many professions can say that?

Hang in there, man. I know that it seems like you have no support. I know it's tough. But, by God.............it's worth it!

And Petey..............feel free to PM me anytime you need some advice or just feel the need to vent. I'll try to help you out....or if you want....I'll just listen. Just don't give up. You're a good young man and the profession and kids need you.