Semper fuhgeddaboutit. A middle school reading teacher unnecessarily created a stir on Tuesday when she ordered one of her students to stop wearing a T-shirt honoring the U.S. Marine Corps or face suspension.
FOX News reports that the child, an eighth-grader at Genoa-Kingston Middle School, was told by reading teacher Karen Deverell that he needed to lose the shirt — but not because the school has anything against the Marines.
Rather, she said, it was because the image of interlocking rifles emblazoned across the shirt front violates the school dress code.
She instructed the unidentified 14-year-old to turn the garment inside out or head to the principal’s office. But it turns out, Deverell overreacted. Genoa-Kingston Superintendent Joe Burgess maintains that the shirt is not in violation of the district’s dress policy, that the “school is well-known for its support of the armed forces,” and that Deverell made the decision unilaterally.
How dedicated is the school to the armed forces? FOX News obtained a statement that reads:
The students and staff regularly write letters of support to the troops, and hold patriotic ceremonies for Veterans Day and Patriots’ Day. We very much support the armed forces and were disheartened to learn of this matter through the media. The administration and school handbook agree that this shirt is not a violation of the dress code. We also take school safety very earnestly and it needs to be recognized that is a topic that we also take very seriously and support our students and staff in providing a safe environment to learn, teach and work in on a daily basis. [Emphasis added]
The second part of the statement seems designed to cover the teacher’s hindquarters, but the highlighted part suggests that she — as a regular writer of letters of support to the troops — should have been more circumspect.
So it would appear that one in the players in his melodrama is in need of a “time out” but that it is her.
The boy’s father, Daniel McIntyre, told FOX he believes the incident is likely an overreaction to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It would be far from the first. Earlier this month, a student was suspended from school for having a picture of a gun on his laptop, while a kindergartner was expelled for bringing her brother’s toy gun to school for show and tell.
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