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Seven-year-old suspended from school for alleged 'pastry gun,' dad says offense and punishment don't add up
Officials at an elementary school in Maryland are suspending seven-year-old for taking a breakfast pastry and shaping it into what looked like a gun, and allegedly saying "bang bang" with it.
Second grader Josh Welch and his father share what happened on “Starting Point” today.
“I was trying to shape it into a mountain, and it turned out to be a gun,” Josh says. “And I did not say bang bang.”
"I believe there needs to be some common sense," dad BJ Welch says. "I believe when you compare the caliber of the offense to the caliber of the punishment, they don't match up. It's a lack of common sense, in conjunction with the use of rules. Honestly. I believe there's some personal bias in the decision as well."
Park Elementary School's principal was unable to talk with CNN, but the school sent a letter home with the students saying "one of our students used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class."
Josh will be suspended for two days, but says he doesn't do anything inappropriate.
"When I'm trying to create stuff like drawing...I don't try to draw inappropriate stuff," he saysl.
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This is one of the craziest reasons for suspension I've ever heard. We need to wake up as a society and focus on the real problems, not chase kids out of school cause they are playing. Education, not suspension is the key here folks. Schools are not there to judge, they are there to teach. This child didn't get taught anything but confusion and paranoia. Another unfortunate victim of an overly paranoid societal swing, due to the terrible loss of children to a psychopath. We all played cops and robbers, pretended to shoot each other....shot each other with water-guns, and yet somehow....none of us started killing people. Let's start a war on poverty, instead of on our children.