This Is Why We Don't Have Zero Tolerance — So Administrators Can Use Judgment
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder uses a specific case to illustrate why zero tolerance policies are inferior to professional judgment by trained administrators.
Key Takeaways
- Zero tolerance removes judgment - Automatic consequences regardless of context produce unjust outcomes
- Professional discretion is better - Administrators who know the students and circumstances make better decisions than rigid policies
- This is why principals need latitude - Effective discipline requires the flexibility to respond proportionately to each situation
Transcript
Wait, who got expelled here?
Apparently a 13 year old girl got expelled back in August after hitting a boy on the school bus because he showed her on his phone pictures of her that had been generated with AI, deep fake explicit photos of her.
And of course she hit him.
And this was after she had reported the issue to the counselor at school, had not been allowed to call her dad.
And ultimately, the boy was charged by the sheriff with a crime.
There are several laws against this in Louisiana, and the state seems to be doing a good job of prosecuting this kind of thing.
But the school expelled her for hitting him.
And I think this is why we don't have zero tolerance laws anymore.
This is why we have progressive discipline and why, as administrators, we have discretion over consequences like this.
Who would hear about this situation?
Who would hear what happened to this girl and look at what she did and decide expelling her is the right thing to do here like please make this make sense to me because i i don't think it makes sense in any universe to expel the victim and the article talks about the you know what the state is doing to fight this problem because it is a big problem but it ends interestingly with some discussion of how kind of teachers are unequipped to deal with this and how teachers need to be informed and figure out how to navigate this.
The kids are like, hold on just a second.
Why do teachers need to navigate this?
This is a criminal matter.
And I'm glad the sheriff was involved.
I'm glad there are criminal charges.
being brought against the boy who did this.
But I just have to say, like, I don't think this is an issue for educators to be the ones responsible for handling.
Like, this is a parent issue.
If you, like, the teacher didn't buy the phone for the kid.
The teacher did not give the kid internet access at home to go online and do this terrible thing.
So I think this is a parent issue.
I think parents need to be educated.
And a good way to educate parents is to criminally charge the people who break the law and do terrible things like we're done to this girl.
So, like, i totally understand where the girl was coming from in hitting the kid but i have absolutely no sympathy for the school that expelled her i think this is just not the right call at all let me know what you think