BCT Editorial – 3/3/09

This page was last updated on March 8, 2009.

An innocent mistake; Editorial; Beaver County Times; March 3, 2009.

The editorial subtitle is “Moon Area incident shows why zero-tolerance policies should be dropped.”

This is at least the sixth editorial on this topic since October 2004 (the first since mid-2007), and none really explored the underlying cause of “zero tolerance” policies. Instead, the Times was content to assert, “the real blame rests with administrators and school boards” (“Senseless,” 1/26/05). This editorial continues the same line of thought. The other editorials were “Beyond belief,” “Inflexible,” “Zero tolerance #1,” and “Zero tolerance #2.”

I agree the zero tolerance issue needs to be resolved, but that won’t happen if we ignore what led to the problem in the first place.

Since the Times still hasn’t figured out the real problem, my comments haven’t changed from my previous critiques.