No Tolerance for ‘Zero Tolerance’

* This is in response to the April 25 letters regarding my child, Lacey Gregory, and “zero tolerance.”

My daughter occasionally uses her backpack to take belongings from her dad’s house to my house. So when she wanted to bring home her new key chain with the little toy gun on it her dad told her to “throw it in your backpack.”

She never took the key chain out to play with. It fell out of her backpack while she was getting her lunch out. She was immediately sent to the principal’s office and slammed with a suspension that will stay on her school record.

There needs to be rules, but make the punishment fit the crime.

To a third-grade little girl, being sent to the principal’s office with a stern talking-to and a warning is punishment enough.

If they had done that with Lacey and you asked her, “What happened?” I’m sure the response would be an ashamed, “I got in trouble,” and you can bet it would never happen again.

I don’t agree with a blanket policy under which the same punishment is given to one little girl for doing something she thought was innocent and was told to do as to the older kid who knowingly commits a more serious violation.

They need to look at each case individually.

Those in favor of the policy had better think twice. Next time it may be your 10th-grader getting expelled for throat lozenges in her purse, which you gave her without realizing they are considered drugs.

JAYDELL GREGORY

Laguna Niguel