Dad wants son back on basketball team

[proud2BlibKansan]

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - Shawnee Mission Schools have one of the toughest conduct policies for extra curricular activities.

Students and their parents have to sign contracts stating they understand the student faces severe consequences if they violate the rules on tobacco and alcohol use.

But are those consequences fair?

The parents of a starting basketball player and honor roll student say their son deserves another chance. But other parents believe it could do him more harm than good, and set a bad example for the rest of the students.

When Russell Haas signed up for basketball at Shawnee Mission South High School, he knew the rules. But he broke them -twice.

more . . . http://www.nbcactionnews.com/news/local/story/Local-Dad-Wants-Son-Back-on-Basketball-Team/LKjugebvBkitc2fGUqs3hA.cspx

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1. School policy aside...

A) He knew the rules...

B) He broke them not once, but twice (and the 2nd time he was the instigator if you want to call it that).

C) He should have ran from the cops like the others (for an honor student... that wasn't very bright).

One thing that really bugs me about the father and son is the all too common "jock attitude"... that they're somehow
exempt from the rules because they play sports and are an asset that the school can't do without.

The kid and his father need to suck it up and deal with the consequences.

[kid a]

3. yep

[vadawg]

6. +1 the rules are the rules,

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. That's pretty much where I am at as well

My dad was a high school basketball coach. Not much sympathy here for this kid.

[kid a]

2. I think its fair. Junior (16) drinking at a high school party once...misses end of BB season.

Same kid throws his own party a few months later while dad's out of town and gets busted twice.

He should sit out the basketball season.

I'm trying to keep my 15 yr-old daughter away from parties and teen drinkers like that.
She competes on the speech/debate team and would face the same punishment.

[MadMaddie]

4. Well it seems that he did get a second chance...

and he blew it. He was the one that had the illegal party....

<snip>
Just three months later, Russell threw his own party that included alcohol, when his dad was gone. Concerned neighbors called the police.
<snip>

The school decision is the right one. Super star athletes don't get a pass.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. I do not believe that schools have such authority over students as some districts assert

Outside activities are just that. I drank in high school as did my daughters. We were in Europe for a good piece of it. Did not change things when we came back to the US.

Similar think for websites and outside publications. They should be immune to any long arm assertion by the schools.

[dsc]

8. He broke the law

and by doing so put himself at risk. If I break the law I might well not have a job the next day. He broke the law not once, but twice.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

16. Outside of school is outside of school. Unless it impacts the classroom, the school should have no

standing. If you and I broke the law, unless it impacts our work, our work would never know. Should be the same standard for schools. Have to wonder how the school even knew (juvenile legal trouble is supposed to be a closed file).

Couple of personal stories:

My daughter as a senior put on her MySpace a picture of her and others in a cafe with her drinking wine. Caused a mild stir at her high school. Her counselor called her in and asked her about it. She said it was perfectly legal, that she should talk to me about it if they had questions, and refused to say anything more. Counselor was miffed and was going to write her up for detention (insubordination) and start down the path of banning her extra curricular activities for the semester. I stopped by the school and made sure the principal attended the meeting with the counselor. I told them that I had actually taken that picture and it was quite legal. The principal said it could not have been legal under any circumstances. I then asked him if he had considered what country the picture might have taken in, reminding them that we had recently moved back to the US from Europe), but he said it did not matter. I corrected him and pointed out the picture was taken in Europe with her cousins, where it was perfectly legal for her to have wine. The principal still disagreed. I told him to get an opinion from the district lawyer or back down. In the end he did. I also told my daughter to quit trolling the school staff at school as it just wasn't sporting, and take the picture down. Turns out she was turned in by the parents of one of her new state side friends.

Another concern I have comes from the current effort by school districts to suppress speech they disagree with done by students off campus. Classic case being "My Sucks.com or Save our school from .com Been involved in two such situations now, basically helping to firewall the students from a pissy school district. In one case a principal told us in writing that if I did not give up the names of who was posting, my daughter would be suspended, even though she did not attend the school in question. I took it to the school board in the public comment section. Caused all sorts of consternation.

Schools have limited loco parentis rights. "For the sake of the children", we can not allow them to take more than those.

[Odin2005]

22. Your and your daughter's experience is a good example why this stuff is totalitarian BS.

And that principle sounds like an ignorant, provincial git that doesn't understand that other countries have different laws pertaining to alcohol.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

23. Unfortunately primary and secondary education has attracted a large number of ignorant, provincial

gits.

[petronius]

7. I generally don't like school rules like this, that link unrelated issues

I.e., out-of-school, off-campus behavior being tied to participation in school activities. However, the rule wasn't a secret and the second chance was blown in a pretty spectacular way.

The dad here is way more of an ass than the kid: "why did he do it?" Because he has an enabling nimrod for a father, that's why...

[TK421]

9. He he...sounds an awful lot like a spoiled brat to me, and a spoiled brat

that thought he could get away with shit like this....yep, I read the article, for any flamers that want to argue about it!

[benld74]

11. IF A school sets such rules in place, they MUST be upheld,,,

no matter what occurs by whom or how many times it happend. I know of many instances in the east side of the state, where similar things happened. And either the kids' parents were so connected financially, by friendship whatever, THAT the penalty was ignored completely.
What message does this send out?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. School should not have that kind of authority, and in fact many do not.

[FLDCVADem]

30. A school should certainly have the right

to determine who will or won't represent that school in athletic or other extra curricular activities. If a school doesn't want a student that has violated the law representing them, they certainly should have that right.

It's legal for me to let my daughter have a glass of wine at home, if I choose to do so. However, if her coach finds out, she's off the team, because alcohol and tobacco use is prohibited.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

34. If extra curricular participation can be limited by out of school behavior

it could mean that if your daughter attended an Obama rally on a Saturday she could be banned from all extra curricular activity. The school could also require participants to attend religious services. Its the same logic...and its wrong


IIRC its illegal to serve a minor alcohol, even at home in the US. The asshat principal I discussed in post #16 was actually correct in his backward way (unable to think outside the US)

[Obamanaut]

12. I go with the school on this. n/t

[Stevenmarc]

13. Good life lesson, violate a contract, deal with the repercussions of your decision, period EOS

[ProgressiveProfessor]

18. It over reaches any legitimate school interest

[tinymontgomery]

14. As a High School teacher who is involved in

lots of out side overnight trips and activities, I am always having to leave students behind from trips due to their breaking school or my rules. The ones that get it can come on the next trip, the one's that don't get to miss a lot of good time. I won't put my job on the line for students that can't follow basic rules. An example is the school I left recently during an outing with the people that relieved me the some kids ended up having sex in the back of the bus, of course the parents blame the people that took them on the trip and not the parents. Their kids are perfect.

[proud2BlibKansan]

28. When I was in high school they caught some kids having sex on a road trip

I don't think they kicked the boy off the team though.

[greennina]

15. He's better off not wasting his time with a sport...

There are much better things he could spend his time on like volunteering in soup kitchens or cleaning-up parks.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

19. Agreed, he could even run a "Myschoolsucks" website and watch the administration

wet themselves. It happens more often that people realize.

[vadawg]

24. lol i got to laugh at those sites when students call out their teachers

but to be honest i hate it when im the victim :) nothing is worse than getting to work to see pics of yourself all over the internets lol

[ProgressiveProfessor]

25. Administrators are really going after those sites, and in some places being successful

They claim that even though it is 100% off campus, they can punish for content. The example of a student body president who said nasty things about some administrators on her blog comes to mind.

When I have helped with those sites, I make sure nothing is personally attributable, and have even set things up to clear students who were implicated.

[vadawg]

26. lol i got a buddy who was photographed having fallen asleep mid way through a donut

parked in a lot, he was ribbed to death about it, we have a large number of people who post pics of us and our vehicles on the local blog, i dont mind as long as they dont put personal info that could endanger me... still some of them are real funny...

[Odin2005]

27. It's disgustingly fascistic.

Leave parenting to the parents, it's not the principal's job to control a student's behavior off school grounds.

[vadawg]

20. WTF maybe you dont think sports are important, but to many they are

and they dont have to exlcude one from other pursuits....

[Odin2005]

21. IMO Schools have no right dicating behavior outside of school.

That's the PARENTS' job. Just more proof that schools are turning into prisons and students ate treated like inmates. Fucking Nanny State totalitarians.

[proud2BlibKansan]

29. This kid could have a drinking problem

I had a friend in high school who was an alcoholic. She got in trouble when she came to school drunk. School made her parents put her in rehab.

[Shandris]

31. This is a split topic really

They shouldn't have any control over things like Myspace or Facebook or publications or what-have-you. Those publications and websites aren't subsidized BY the school. However, this is a sport. As such, the sport is financed by the taxpayers and the administration of the school and they have every right to create conduct rules for those who wish to participate. He agreed to the conduct rules, he broke them. This is as close to a cut-and-dried case as you can get with schools nowadays. This is a good time for him to learn that his 'status' doesn't give him a free pass to do as he wishes. Perhaps if a few more people had learned that, we wouldn't have the business climate (for example) that we have today.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

35. Not really, schools use the same logic to do both

Basically its anything the student does can/will impact the school, so we can punish/deny participation for anything we don't like. There was a recent case where a student was removed as student body president for saying thing on a blog about the some school staff.

[Nye Bevan]

32. Just *3 months* after being arrested he throws his *own* party which includes alcohol?

He should consider himself lucky not to be expelled. He needs to learn that actions have consequences; Daddy will not always be around to try to bail him out. Sounds like his jock sense of entitlement needs to be drummed out of him.

[DU GrovelBot]

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