Kindergartner suspended for bringing toy gun to school
A Hopkinton mother plans to meet with school officials Friday to appeal her 5-year-old son’s punishment for bringing a toy gun to class.
Christina Stone said her son, Jonah, received a half-day suspension after his kindergarten teacher at Center School saw him show a toy gun to a classmate.
“I think they are going a little overboard. He really wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Stone told the Boston Globe. “He had no intent of hurting anyone and he was even sharing.”Stone said she hadn’t known that the boy had the toy — purchased during a family vacation last month in Arizona — in his pocket when he left for school Wednesday. She said Jonah doesn’t understand why having it at school was wrong.
At a meeting with Center School interim Principal Mildred Katzman and a school police officer, Stone said the Sandy Hook school shootings were mentioned. Afterwards, she tried to explain to Jonah what happened at the Connecticut school in December, when a gunman killed 20 students — all around her son’s age — and six teachers.
“I think they’re trying to make an example of him,” Stone told the Globe. “But it is a bad example. He is so young and I shouldn’t have had to explain Newtown to a 5-year-old.”
After discovering that the school handbook does not explicitly prohibit toy weapons, Stone decided to appeal the punishment. She plans to reach out to the American Civil Liberties Union if the school district doesn’t erase the incident from his record.
Katzman and Hopkinton School Superintendent Steven Hiersche did not reply to the Globe’s request for comment.
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