'Zero' can add up to less than nothing in 'zero tolerance'

When an honor student faces expulsion and charges in juvenile court for helping his grandmother move (a bread knife fell out of a box of kitchenware and was still lying in the back of the kid's pickup truck when a school guard spotted it), "zero tolerance" has degenerated into "zero thought."
There is no question that school grounds should be weapon-free zones. We have no problem with school districts that deal harshly with students who bring guns or knives to school.
Certainly students who bring weapons onto a campus with the intent to use them or with the intent for someone else to use them must be dealt with harshly. The one-year expulsion called for in federal "safe school" legislation is not too harsh under those circumstances.
And sometimes even young pupils who don't fully understand the seriousness of bringing a deadly weapon to school to show off must be dealt with harshly in order to send a message to the entire student body that weapons aren't toys.
But the case of Taylor Hess fit none of those descriptions. It did not rise on the frivolity scale to the level of the elementary school pupil who was suspended for pointing a chicken bone at another student and saying "bang," or that of the boy who was suspended because he carried a plastic hatchet to school as part of his firefighter Halloween costume. But it came close.
What happened: Hess is a 16-year-old junior honor student in Bedford, Texas, who had never been in trouble in or out of school -- until he helped deliver household goods from his ailing grandmother's home to a Goodwill store.
In the course of transportation, a long but dull bread knife fell from a box of kitchenware and remained unseen in the bed of Hess's pick-up truck.
The first one to see it was a security guard patrolling the parking lot of Hess' school.
It was at that point that the school's "zero tolerance" policy kicked in and Hess got kicked out. He was expelled from his school for a year and ordered to attend class at an alternative school operated for juvenile delinquents.
The diversion precluded Hess from pursuing academic subjects consistent with his goal of being an aeronautical engineer and from participating in his sport, swimming, which he hopes may bring him a scholarship. All because he was careless in unpacking his truck while performing a good deed.
No one at the school, including the principal, could say they doubted Hess was telling the truth about what happened. All said that their hands were tied by the school's zero tolerance policy.
Happily, it turns out, that wasn't true. After two weeks and a lot of bad publicity, the school district announced that it was altering the expulsion to a suspension and that Hess had served his time.
He's now back in school, and school officials in Texas and a lot of other places are taking another look at policies that give school officials no discretion in attempting to avoid an obvious injustice.