Pubdate: Fri, 01 Jun 2001
Source: Cranbrook Daily Townsman (CN BC)
Website: http://www.dailytownsman.com/
Address: 822 Cranbrook St., North Cranbrook, B.C., Canada V1C-3R9
Contact:  2001 The Cranbrook Daily Townsman
Fax: (250) 426-5003
Related Article: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n985/a02.html
Author: Lori Sturney

STUDENT SUSPENSIONS

I would like to comment on the recent Laurie School suspensions.

What a great way to reduce class size!  Let's just kick them out and say 
what else could we do.  This is in NO WAY positive to our community, 
society, or the kids.  The latest figure is that 21 students were given 
anywhere from a one week suspension up to suspension for the rest of the 
year for allegedly smoking pot off of school property.  This resulted in 
the arrest of a 20-year-old non-student for the possession of a small 
quantity of marijuana.

Sounds to me like they never took any real preventative measures if things 
could lead up to suspensions to this many students at one time. This was 
apparently a daily event that they have let build and build and then 
brought the hammer down.  I don't think that this approach is recommended 
by any style of child care.

It's been my experience that if you deal with things when they begin and 
are small they are a lot easier to handle with a far higher success rate. 
For example, one would think that if a police officer was to take a stroll 
through the problem area during the problem times this whole situation 
could likely not have grown to such an unacceptable level.

And before you point the finger at the home or the parents, this one has to 
be shared with the school who obviously let things get way out of control 
without any effective measures of prevention, the system that has the 
school, officials, teachers and all the resources stretched so thin that 
they barely help anyone anymore.  The bottom line is that this is not just 
a home problem, it needs to be addressed by everyone, schools and society 
at large.  We have to devote more of our resources to our youth.  Kicking 
them out, not letting them skateboard, calling them useless, lazy and rude 
does not help society at all.  It almost ensures higher drop out rates, 
teen pregnancies, higher youth crime & suicide rates and that's just for 
starters.  One mature way for the schools to deal with this would be to 
become more a part of the solution than the problem.  These suspensions 
don't sound like much of a solution.

Lori Sturney

Cranbrook
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