Shelby Sendelbach with her dad
Houston Chronicle – 7-7-07: — Apparently the Japanese have sent over TV crews to carry this story and to humiliate America. Good work Texas.
Shelby Sendelbach, a sixth-grader in the Katy Independent School District, was read her rights, ticketed and punished with a mandatory four-month assignment to an alternative school because she wrote “I love Alex” on a gymnasium wall with a baby blue Sharpie.
The graffiti offense is a Level 4 infraction in the district’s discipline plan, along with making terroristic threats, possessing dangerous drugs, and assaulting with bodily injury. Only a Level 5 — for murder, possessing firearms, committing aggravated or sexual assault, arson or other felonies — is more severe.
Shelby’s parents, Lisa and Stu Sendelbach, say they do not condone what their daughter did. Nevertheless, they are fighting to get her punishment reduced because they believe it is too harsh.
Eric Duhon, head of School Board. Nice wig, love the smirk too.
related link:
Local paper starts new feature to ridicule the Zero Tolerance law
High and Mighty School Districted busted for Ethics violations, using school computers to do political work
In 2006 A Katy Teacher was Busted for taping students mouths shut with Scotch tape!
School Board email addresses
Irate blogger blames boomer generation (for everything).
I am saddened by what I see our country becoming.
Comment by Smartalix — 7/8/2007 @ 11:13 am
And yet we have the potential to become great. Never in human history has so much knowledge been accumulated so quickly, the benefits of which could radically change the way we live, work and enjoy life. There are so many ills which could be cured without hardly any sacrifice by any taxpayer, if only the goals were specific and we could get over this war baloney for the benefit of all. Perhaps I’m an optimist, but I, too, wonder where we’re going?
Didn’t we free Europe from the Nazis? Didn’t we achieve one of mankind’s greatest goals of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth” in less than a decade? And by then we were in VietNam and a POTUS was about to be impeached.
Good Grief!! Is it all about power, greed and religion?
This seems to be about stupidity. You left that one out.
I guess you guys never heard about the ten percenter rule. Only 10% of the people on the planet have a clue. Many of the commenters on here are ten percenters as are all of the editors.
What! Japanese reporters humiliating America? That’s W’s job! Think he outsourced it?
We see this beaurocratic incompetency in many areas of society.
Why?
It is an artifact of the Peter Principle. Competent people at anything get bored and move on, leaving less competent behind. (For all the school teachers here==not everyone left behind are incompetent umkay?)
Such organizations can still perform well IF—-I SAY IF— they have inspired leadership. There are excellent school systems in the GOUSA. In each one, you will find inspired leadership. In the other 90% you will find leadership deflated and simply seeking the attributes of a job, they missed the calling of the job years before which is what the Peter Principle leads to.
Growing up in the ghetto I came across a lot of graffiti. At about the age of 9 i decided to join the tags scrawled on the walls by coming up with my own tag: DJ David Dee. Yeah, I know it sounds corny but I was 9. Anyway, finally my aunt found out that I had marked the stairwell wall with my tag. She simply told me not to do it anymore and i saw march to the bathroom to get a bucket with soap and water and scrub brush. She went out to my grafitti and struggled to remove it from the wall. She toiled and toiled but never said anything again about it afterward.
I never did grafitti again.
36—Great Mom. Great Parent. School are said to be “in parenti locum”–to act as parents. I wish they did.
but as Norman Mailer just said on C-Span, the natural tendency of government is fascism. Democracy is a rare flower, Freedom even rarer.
My Mom only hit me once (and I deserved it). Think I’ll go give her a hug.
If only we had zero tolerance for our elected officials who are not working for the good of the people, would shit like this end and we would have a better country and state.
People should mirror back the rules imposed on them and expect our politicians and bureaucratic live up to the same standard.
29# OhForTheLoveOf has is right, Like Stalin isn’t Texas just giving the people “what they really want-joint effort, communal effort.”?
If you wanted to overlord a sheeple populous, raise some fear, get them to denounce their neighbor to the police (so they wouldn’t focus on you) and tell them how virtuous and how Jesus is you favorite philosopher.
She’s 12? Shouldn’t she at least be in 7th grade? HMMMM.
Geez, it’s another sad day for the USA. OFTLO has it exactly right and has posted as such many times before… you have to get off your collective asses and fight back. Get involved. Start a petition or email campaign against Eric Duhon and embarrass the hell out of him.
I live in a town where in the last civic election, only 26% of eligible voters voted… and the local paper is full of cry babies. F’k.
This is one of a long list. Check out this site : http://www.thisistrue.com/zt.html
Why are we in a basket going down hill and picking up speed?
I laughed at this, really.
I’ve been suspended for less when I was in high school, but 4 months at an alternative school for confiding with a wall about her feelings for some boy named Alex?
Hey. It’s Texas. You get what you came for.
Burn witch burn! Onward Christian soldiers!
Wow, I commute through the heart of downtown Denver every day and I have never seen graffiti that says “i love you”. It’s usually just a teeny bit more disturbing…
Glad I am British . Only the red neck thugs of Texas could couild come up with such Nazi behaviour to this [ silly but innocent] girl . Shame on you school authorities!
Re. Stephen D. Hazlett , Sunderland , UK
Good post. You make some great points that most people do not fully understand.
“The graffiti offense is a Level 4 infraction in the district’s discipline plan, along with making terroristic threats, possessing dangerous drugs, and assaulting with bodily injury. Only a Level 5 — for murder, possessing firearms, committing aggravated or sexual assault, arson or other felonies — is more severe.”
I like how you explained that. Very helpful. Thanks.
The number one problem that all American States and their other developed counterparts are facing is the vast increase in automobile crashes due to increased cases of DWI (i.e. driving while intoxicated with alcohol or drugs). This has become the leading cause of disability and death in lots of youngsters. To combat this problem, the government has brought into existence the ‘Zero Tolerance Law ‘.