While writing yesterday about a bureaucrat who might need to give up doggie day care service for his pet because of make-believe “deep spending cuts,” I mentioned that we need something akin to a medal-of-honor award for bureaucrats who endure untold suffering.
In that same spirit, we need some sort of national award for school officials who engage is spectacular acts of heroism to save their communities from the youth brigade of al Qaeda.
If we had this kind of award, some of the past winners would include:
And if we had such an award, Valerie Lara-Black might have an early favorite for the 2013. What did Ms. Lara-Black do to put herself in position for such a high honor? Well, she went above and beyond the call of duty.
A 7-year-old Mary Blair Elementary School student says he’s confused about getting in trouble…Thompson School District officials contend that the boy broke one of the school’s “absolutes.” Parent Mandie Watkins said Mary Blair principal Valerie Lara-Black called her Friday afternoon to inform her that her second-grade son, Alex, had been suspended.
Another thwarted terrorist!
What did this nascent young criminal do? What horrid offense against the community did he commit? Why was he suspended?
…for throwing an imaginary grenade during recess on the playground. Alex did not have anything in his hand at the time and made no threats toward other people, Watkins reportedly was told.
Thank goodness that Ms. Lara-Black was able to nip this crisis in the bud. Showing a mastery of bureaucracy, she quickly deployed her school’s policy against play weapons and she decided that an imaginary play weapon was just as dangerous as a real play weapon.
The rules are laid out by Mary Blair Elementary School in a list of “absolutes” that are posted on the school’s website and are aimed at making Mary Blair a safe environment. Included in those absolutes are no physical abuse or fighting – real or play – and the no-weapons absolute also covers real or play weapons.
I hope the school also has a policy against playing tag as well. After all, that’s a militaristic game that sometimes involves aggressive touching.
And if the kids play kickball during recess, I hope there’s a rule that all games end in ties so there are no winners and losers (or perhaps just require the kids to play soccer, where all games seem to end in scoreless ties anyway).
You can’t be too careful. It takes a lot of care and planning, after all, to raise the next generation of social workers!
Though I am a bit surprised that this happened in Colorado. The folks I’ve met at the High Lonesome Ranch, for instance, obviously were not lobotomized and emasculated while at school, so perhaps mind-numbing stupidity is a recent phenomenon in the state.
At least this type of thinking hasn’t spread to Texas, where policymakers are more likely to let teachers carry guns rather than turn them into enforcers of political correctness.
You can get a sense of how folks think in Texas from this coyote joke and this mock police exam.
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