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).
What’s wrong with a mandatory four-month assignment to an alternative school?
In my day they would just make the offender repaint the wall. Have these “administrators” lost ALL common sense?
#1
Alex isn’t there.
Public schools are there to train the future sheep about respect for authority and the law. Education is secondary.
#2, #3. In my high school in the late 1960s, there was only the misdirection of rote learning in purposeless subjects.
This is a level 4 offense and a felony? I’d love to see what a level one offense is–whispering too loudly? Looking crosseyed at a teacher probably a level 2?
Stupid rules harshly enforced only teach DISRESPECT for law and authority. Schools are out of control.
Crazy! Just get her to clean the wall and give her detention for a couple of days. Poor kid.
“”What’s wrong with a mandatory four-month assignment to an alternative school?””
The alternative school at Katy is where all the ‘bad’ kids go. i.e. gang members, violent kids, drug users, etc. Lots of these kids already have criminal records. It has metal detectors, guards, kids are escorted between classes, no talking etc. and is essentially run like a juvenile detention center.
Not a place for a good kid that wrote on the wall.
From the state that gave us George Bush
7. “Not a place for a good kid that wrote on the wall.”
But it makes sense from the school’s perspective. After four months in that detention center, Shelby will become one of the real bad kids. Then when she gets back in the normal school and acts up, the school will point to her behavior and say, “See, we didn’t overreact, we were right all along. She’s a bad girl who needed severe punishment.”
Repaint the wall and be done with it.
No need to do something idiotic like this. I woulkd guess a little hard work might make lil miss Lavigne look-a-like think better next time.
Why is it since the dawn of mascara that girls under 18 must apply it like they are raccoons????
Cursor_
Her ADD prevented her from remembering that ole Texas slogan
“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime”.
This could end up a Federal issue if she doesn’t get a special disposition because of her disability.
Or her sentence could be commuted to completing her education in a good ol’ lilywhite biblethumping independent school. Independent of knowledge or thought. The commuter would approve.
Wait a minute. This is fricken Texas we’re talking about! The girl should be damn glad she’s not a young black male. Her ass would have beaten and placed on death row for sure.
Zero Tolerance rules are pretty much like Communism. Sounds awesome on paper, but in practice it’s god-awful.
Having a rule like “anyone who vandalizes school property will receive a mandatory 4 month assignment to a alternative school” sounds practical on paper, mostly because the first thing you think of when you hear “vandalize” or “Graffiti” is a gang member or skater dude tagging the walls with a spray can. What you don’t immediately realize is that a young girl declaring her love for some one with a sharpie falls under the same rule. Or anyone who decides to write “Mr. Johnson is a poopie-head” in the bathroom.
What exactly are we not tolerating now? $1 worth of paint in total damages?
And we wonder why drug abuse and self mutilation are on the rise…
Lucky this isn’t the Arab world. There she would be beheaded or at the very least both hands but off.
If the rule and consequinces were published, then STFU and do the time.
Congratulations! Once again America has become the laughing stock of the so-called free world. And guess what? These types of idiotic laws and police state mentality is only going to get worse, regardless if you vote in Republicrats or Demicans as they are all horribly corrupt whores. They all are corporate shills, particularly beholden to the all time criminal profiteers, the Military Industrial CONGRESSIONAL Complex. And the only way you can distract the public from the massive greed based crimes being committed is to turn them against each other with straw dog issues like “Immigration” “Flag burning” “Gay marriage” “Drugs” (a good one as this is the biggest feeder to the second biggest growth industry in the US the Federal Bureau of Prisons). So let the morbidly obese Americans stuff their faces with McDonalds and their heads with Paris Hilton or that great, wonderful all time cohesive politic of hate, bullsh+t and whitewash of the most horrific crimes: religion. Don’t forget the last two appointments made to the Supreme Court by King George are evangelical Christians and so you will never be seeing personal freedoms do anything other than be destroyed over the next twenty years or so. And here’s the biggest punchline of all: the fat, fearful, dimwits (American Public) can change it all in a few days if they had the motivation, intelligence and gumption to do it but alas they are too concerned with being mean and petty to everyone the can as well as stuffing their faces and heads with junk food. HA! HA! The jokes on them and they don’t even know they’re allowing it to be done to themselves everytime they look to some authority (politician, religion) to “lead them”. HA! HA! HA! What a bunch of suckers!!!!
Hey, it’s Texas. What do you expect? Maybe Bush will hold a tactical conference with cronies in the oval office (to be spun as “hard study of the issue”) and commute her sentence.
Nah. She’s not a wealthy Republican who perjured herself and obstructed justice. She just wrote on a wall that she loved some other kid. Hell with her.
WTF is wrong with Texas nowadays? This story is just pathetic.
Public schools shoot be shut down and the money needs to be refunded. These are sorry excuses for educational facilities.
I say send them up to boot camp in Northern Canada where the bears and Manitoba blackflies will get them.
“The don’t steal Dodge Durrangos in Winnipeg”
If her parents taught her to respect other people’s property she wouldn’t be in trouble now. If I did this when I was in school I would have got three beatings one from the teacher that caught me ,one from the principal, & one from my Dad when he got home from work.
Technically the school is her (and her parents) property since they pay the taxes for it. The most that should have been done was make her clean it up.
This is ridiculous.
Obviously, she’s on the road to being a hardened criminal. No need to waste taxpayer’s money on her. Four months in alternative school? I say execute her! This is Texas, after all, the Saudi Arabia of the US.
And given that she wrote this in an area of the bleachers already covered by felonious graffiti (which is why–since the school didn’t clean it off–she thought it was OK), clearly the rest of the school is a nest of future murders and worse. Nuke it and move on!
Look, as always, at the bright side of this incident. As bobbo sez: “Stupid rules harshly enforced only teach DISRESPECT for law and authority.”
And after this, we have one more young person who will lack inclination to reflexively submit to authority, knowing that authority can sometimes be fulla shit. There’s one less future sheeple in Harris County now, and every one saved represents progress in warding off the encroaching police / nanny state.
9,
You hit the nail on the head. They are creating the monster they claim to hate.
Why are Texans (and by extension the rest of the countryu) such sheeple? They get polluted, taken advantage of, and lied to and they just keep sucking on what Bush and his ilk are spunking.
This is EXACTLY what Franklin was talking about when he spoke abouy freedom vs. security. We become a beehive because we’ve been talked into thinking freedom dangerous. How much of the problem is caused by the so-called attempts at a solution?
We make soft drugs illegal, creating an automatic criminalk underclass out of otherwise-useful members of society. We make expressions of rage against the system (formerly protecgted speech) crimes and make criminals out of those that dare express an opinoin different than that of those in power. We start spying on one another because we have been made afraid.
We are a society with an illness that needs a good dose of salts to clean the shit out of our system. We have given those who work for us power over our ability to manage them. That brings ruin in any organization.
I am saddened by what I see our country becoming.
Old Geezer ( #23 ), U and Jerk-Face ( #13 ), appear to be on the same page where the championing of physical abuse and violence is concerned.
Different strokes ( pun intended ) for different folks, I guess.
I agree with Comment by god ( #12 ). There, she could be taught that if beatings were good enough for Jesus, they’re good enough for her.
Allen McDonald, El Galloviejo®
#14 – Zero Tolerance rules are pretty much like Communism.
Is there a variation on Godwin’s Law that can applied to this moronic statement.
#18 – These types of idiotic laws and police state mentality is only going to get worse, regardless if you vote in Republicrats or Demicans as they are all horribly corrupt whores.
Or a version of Godwin’s for this inbred opinion?
Why do you think there are zero tolerance rules? And who do you think enacted them? Do you think Congress passed The Anti-Sharpie Act of 1998? That’s a local school board’s rule enacted because parents demanded that schools get tough on everything, even things that weren’t real problems in the first place.
The Zero Tolerance rule for drugs in Fairborn, Ohio public schools allowed administrators to look tough on drugs, even when no real drug problem existed, but it resulted in one of several lawsuits over suspensions and expulsions because a teenage girl took an aspirin after lunch.
But you people get the government you deserve. Until you are smart enough to participate in the system and actively engage your federal, state, and local governments in the process of seeking proactive solutions to real problems, I’d kindly ask that you shut the fuck up and stop voting.
Jeebus H. Cripes!!! Doesn’t anyone here (or in Texas) realize that Sharpie marker ink dissolves instantly in isopropyl alcohol??? (rubbing alcohol) It’s one of the easiest things to erase. We used it all the time to mark on film. It comes right off with alcohol!