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Nick Martinez said he hugged his best friend, a female student, quickly between classes, according to WKMG-TV, Orlando, and never thought the gesture would result in suspension. The principal at Southwest Middle School in Palm Bay saw the hug and brought the two students to the dean, who issued a one-day in-school suspension.

“Honestly, I didn’t know, because I didn’t think hugging was a bad thing. I didn’t know you could get suspended for it,” Martinez told WKMG-TV. “A lot of friends are hugging. I just happened to be the one caught doing it.”
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“We cannot make an opinion or judgment call on whether a hug is appropriate or not. It’s very difficult to police that on campus,” Christine Davis, the  public information officer for Brevard County Public Schools, told ABC News.

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NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.

Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.

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In my opinion "zero tolerance" policies make no sense.

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I'm guessing Elodin would endorse a zero tolerance policy on abortion.

Snow.... did I just bring up abortion?

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If a child violates a school policy the administrator should consider a number of things such as:
1) Did the child intend to violate the policy.
2) What is the intent of the policy.
3) Is the child likely to violate the policy again?
4) What corrective measures make sense?

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Rules should be applied by someone who has at least a rudimentary ability to reason and who understands what the purpose of the rule is.

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zero-tolerance policy on weapons

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I'm certain that an adult is "superior" or more "intelligent" then a child.

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My second example was a 6 year old boy bringing his new cub scout utility utensil to school to eat his lunch with. The boy did not think of his new toy as a weapon. Does it make sense to send him to reform school for a month and a half? Could not the situation have been resolved by the teacher explaining to the boy that even though his new cub scout utensil is cool he can't bring it to school because it has a knife that could be used to hurt someone with?

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I'm certain that an adult is "superior" or more "intelligent" then a child.

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With new federal guidelines dictating what is served at school cafeterias during lunch time, school districts all over the country have reworked their menus to accommodate the new rules.  The changes include serving more whole grains, daily doses of fruits and vegetables, less sugar and salt, and only low- or non-fat milk.

For the first time, school lunches must have age-aligned calorie maximums, capping the amount of calories high school students eat to around 850 calories.  The new restrictions all come from the updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and are funded by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 – legislation promoted by Michelle Obama.

While the changes may seem like a step in a healthier direction, not all students are finding them so tasty.  On Monday, about 70 percent of the 830 students at Mukwonago High School in Wisconsin who typically buy their lunch boycotted the school’s cafeteria, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.  The high schoolers were joined by middle schoolers in the district, reducing the number of lunches sold by half.

According to the Journal Sentinel, the Mukwonago School District is not alone, as many other schools nationwide are also reporting students frustrated with the new rules.

One such student from Mukwonago High, Nick Blohm, said the healthier food is not so much the problem as it is portion size.  A 6-foot-3-inch, 210-pound linebacker, Blohm said he burns around 3,000 calories during three hours of football practice and weight training.  He’s also the class president, and he’s taking various Advanced Placement classes.  But the new caps, he said, are making it harder to perform both physically and academically.

"A lot of us are starting to get hungry even before the practice begins," Blohm told the Journal Sentinel. "Our metabolisms are all sped up."

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Different people have different caloric needs based on their metabolism and activity

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A Florida school district is considering a plan to install surveillance cameras on cafeteria trash cans to monitor what kids are throwing away – after they discovered that students were tossing out their federally-mandated fruit and vegetables.

The Lake County School Board said more than $75,000 worth of vegetables have been thrown in the garbage. The veggies and fresh fruit are party of the Obama administration’s policy to force schools to provide healthy produce in lunch rooms.

“It’s fairly specific recipe of what they would like us to serve,” Lake County School Board member Tod Howard told Fox News. “Unfortunately, much of it has to do with fresh fruit and vegetables and it seems to be going into the trash. And that’s not okay.”

So Howard suggested the district attach security cameras to the trash cans to monitor exactly what is being thrown away.

“It will also give us documentation so that we can go back to the federal government and say here’s what we are finding,” he said. “We do know there’s an issue.”

School districts across the nation are furious with the Obama administration’s orders. Some students have staged strikes while others have launched petition drives urging the federal government to change their policy.

But Lake County is believed to be the first to actually videotape kids tossing their veggies – and that has some parents upset.

“So we’re going to spend how many more thousands of dollars to put cameras on trash cans to document the thousands of dollars in food the kids are throwing away,” one parent wrote on ClickOrlando.com “This is a no brainer, kids are not going to eat the stuff served at school. Has anyone really looked at these lunch trays?”

“Why not just remove the kids from their parent’s home at 3 – 5 years-old and put them in mass dormitories where their entire lives can be monitored and properly controlled so that they become properly modeled citizens and serve as they are needed by our enlightened leaders,” another reader wrote.

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He said the cameras were meant to give the school district evidence they need to push back against the federal guidelines.

“If we just can’t get kids to eat broccoli and 90 percent of it is going in the trash – that’s a waste of taxpayer dollars – and the federal government needs to look at their mandate,” he said. “We have no choice in the matter. This is just a tool to help us document he issue.”

No decisions have been made on the cameras – yet.

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