Public Schools Are “Clueless” About Guns

By Scott Rubush, FrontPageMagazine.com | December 7, 2000

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SCHOOL STUDENTS in California’s San Fernando Valley may be the targets
of ridicule in Alicia Silverstone films, but it’s the Valley’s school
administrators who have shown themselves to be really “clueless.”

Especially when it comes to handling “weapons incidents.”

In one incident last week at Telfair Elementary School, the “weapon”
turned out to be no weapon at all. Instead, nine-year-old Vincent
Olivarez was nearly suspended from the Pacoima, CA school because he
was found in possession of snapshots taken while he and his brother
fired guns at a shooting range, under the supervision of their aunt,
a certified police weapons instructor. According to the boy’s family,
administrators told Vincent that the pictures were “inappropriate.”

The family says that a substitute teacher saw the pictures lying in
young Vincent’s bookbag and confiscated them.

Later, when Vincent returned from lunch, he was summoned to the
Principal’s office, where a school nurse interrogated him about the
pictures.

According to the Olivarez family, the Principal’s secretary then called
Vincent’s mother, Anita, and told her that her son had “extremely
disturbing and offensive photographs.” The secretary refused, however,
to divulge what sort of pictures they were.

She simply told Anita to show up at the school at 2:30 pm for a meeting.

The boy’s mother said she could come at 5 pm. At that, the Principal’s
secretary threatened that she was going to call the police to question
the boy about the photographs, and that he would face suspension.

Angrily, Anita Olivarez said she was coming immediately to pick up her
son and that no one was to speak with him. Officials of the Los Angeles
Unified School District (LAUSD) later overruled the school, and decided
not to suspend Vincent. The pictures have now been mailed back to
Vincent’s home.

Still, for Vincent and his family, the situation is hardly resolved.

The fourth-grader remains frightened by the way school officials behave
towards him, and his family now is weighing the feasibility of trans-
ferring him to another school. “He was distraught by the whole thing.
He doesn’t feel safe there,” a relative told FrontPageMagazine.com on
Wednesday.

LAUSD describes its policy as one of “no tolerance” for weapons possession.

Officials refused to comment on whether Vincent’s pictures violated that
policy. The “zero tolerance” approach has swept the nation, in response
to America’s increasingly lawless public schools. But the incident at
Telfair is just the latest in a series of incidents that have left many
parents wondering if “zero tolerance” goes too far.

In March, four New Jersey kindergarten students were suspended for playing
cops-and-robbers. In September, a third-grader was suspended from a Green
Bay, WI school for possessing a key chain with a small replica of a gun.

Weeks later, an 11-year-old girl was suspended from a school in the
Atlanta suburbs when administrators ruled that a chain attached to a
wallet depicting the Tweety Bird cartoon character was too long, and
might possibly be used as a weapon.

In October, another San Fernando Valley pupil was suspended when he brought
an “illegal and dangerous explosive device” – a firecracker – to school.

Anti-weapons Puritanism has come under fire from all quarters.
Conservatives
have criticized the approach as a “gun-grab.” Some leftists have asserted
that the policies unfairly target minority students.

For their part, administrators stonewalled over the Olivarez incident,
but remained defensive of their no-tolerance policy. The principal at
Telfair Elementary declined an interview with FrontPageMagazine.com,
and LAUSD officials refused to speak about this specific case or whether
the incident would appear in Vincent’s permanent record.

But Jim Gamboa, an LAUSD spokesman said of zero-tolerance policies in
general that “when it comes to safety, it’s hard to overreact.” Vincent’s
family contends that, in this case, the school clearly did overstep its
bounds.

Relatives say that the affair has been a crushing blow to the self-esteem
that Vincent developed at the shooting range. According to the aunt who
supervised the shoot, Reynalda Bodnar, Vincent had never fired a weapon
prior to the recent outing. “He’s very shy, very passive,” said Bodnar.

“He finally got comfortable to the point where he would even hold a gun,
and now this happens.”

Bodnar, who works as a law enforcement official just east of Los Angeles,
said that safety concerns motivated her to teach Vincent how to handle
guns. “It prevents accidents from happening,” Bodnar said of firearms
instruction. “It’s a curiosity-killed-the-cat situation. If kids don’t
understand how to handle a firearm, there can be deadly consequences if
they find one.”

Although Vincent is just nine years old, Bodnar said that the youngster
had already developed a negative image of guns. Bodnar suggests the
public schools are to blame: “When we were at the shooting range, Vincent
said to me, ‘guns are bad.’ And I said, ‘who’s teaching you this garbage?’
He’s in LA County. I’ll tell you who’s teaching him this garbage.’”

Scott Rubush is the assistant editor of FrontPageMagazine.com. Readers
may send him e-mail at [email protected]