Essay On Zero Tolerance In School

A six-year-old boy is expelled from his school. This child is merely worried about his friends making a fool out of him, but a lot more is at stake than a little teasing. The boy will have this black cloud circling above him his whole life. The black mark will affect acceptance into college, finding a job and every part of his life and the boy may never be successful because of this one mistake he made while he was too young to truly understand what he did wrong. What is so bad about that fun little tool? Nothing would be bad, if the zero tolerance policy wasn’t in place.
The zero tolerance policy states that any weapon or drug in the school will be removed and the student will be expelled for one year. Knives forgotten in pockets or even a screwdriver are considered weapons. Passing out a Tylenol to a friend can be considered drug dealing and is grounds for
Too many students are being expelled. In Colorado “nearly 100,000 . . . students have been referred to law enforcement by their schools” (Zeroing Out 1). Each enrolled student brings a large sum of money to the school district they belong to, so the schools need those students to come to school. Without the money that taxpayers give each year, the school would hardly function. One or two students wouldn’t be a major problem, but when thousands of students are being expelled for at least a whole year, it begins to add up. For example: if one child is worth 6,500 dollars, that isn’t much compared to the millions the school receives, but when multiplied by one thousand or even one hundred, huge amounts of money disappears. As many as “10,000 students, about 12% of the city’s enrollment” (Urbina 1) were missing from the schools ever decreasing budget. District budgets, much like everything else, are being attacked by the deficit in full force. Zero tolerance policy is condemning the budget further by expelling a large portion of their