SOUTHERN LEE HIGH SCHOOL IN SANFORD NORTH CAROLINA should be closed. Its principal, and board of education, are too dumb to hold jobs. And its Superintendent, Jeffrey C. Moss, is no poster boy for Ed.D. degrees.
“Bottom line is we want to ensure every child feels safe on our campus.” Not safe from idiots like you, Mr. Moss. Because you’re unwilling to take responsibility for discipline, you formulate and enforce rules that make public schools — and now, particularly, yours — a national joke. From the comments: “Let’s have the students feel safe. How about letting them feel like their entire lives and livelihood aren’t at risk at your institution from an honest mistake. You are ruining this child’s life and future because some bonehead can’t recognize an honest mistake.”
It’s beginning to seem like placing your children in public schools is placing them at unacceptable risk.
UPDATE: Reader Gregg Hanke writes: “There is a cure: vouchers. Yes, they have been shot down in numerous elections, and I am disappointed the Tea Partiers have not pushed them yet. But perhaps the reason they were shot down is because they were promoted before the situation was ripe enough for the voters to accept them. And this situation over a paring knife is certainly ripe.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Tim Wohlford sends this, which he says is a reply from the school system:
The facts recited by the media are erroneous and without foundation.
On October 20, 2010, a faculty member at Southern Lee High School discovered a student on campus with marijuana. Based upon information obtained in the interview between school administration and the student in question, a search of several other students, including Miss Smithwick, was promptly conducted. During this search, a 3-inch paring knife was found on the person of Miss Smithwick in her purse. The knife was not found in Miss Smithwick’s lunchbox as reported by her family and the media.
Miss Smithwick has not been long-term suspended from Southern Lee High School. She is currently enrolled as a student at the school. Over two months after the event it is a mystery to us that the Smithwick’s concerns were not brought to our attention by the family through normal appeal procedures prior to going to the press.
Hmm. Well, if this is true, then the news story was wrong on some particulars. But it quotes the school superintendent. Stay tuned.
MORE: Reader John Torbett writes:
The school district’s response shows how clueless they are. Apparently, their primary defense is that the pairing knife was found in Smithwick’s purse. However, follow your link to the WRAL website and click on the second photograph and you can see that she had a lunch bag that looks like a purse. It isn’t a traditional metal lunchbox like a construction worker might carry, but it is still a lunchbox. As is usually the case, it seems that the school district is coming up with lame excuses. If your reader is correct and that is their defense, I hope someone calls them on it.
We’ll see, won’t we?