Jolly Rancher lands Brazos ISD third-grader in detention for a week
ORCHARD, Texas – A third-grader at Brazos Elementary was given a week’s detention for possessing a Jolly Rancher.
School officials in Brazos County are defending the seemingly harsh sentence. The school’s principal and superintendent said they were simply complying with a state law that limits junk food in schools.
But the girl’s parents say it’s a huge overreaction.
“I think it’s stupid to give a kid a week’s worth of detention for a piece of candy,” said Amber Brazda, the girl’s mother. “The whole thing was just ridiculous to me.”
Leighann Adair, 10, was eating lunch Monday when a teacher confiscated the candy. Her parents said she was in tears when she arrived home later that afternoon and handed them the detention notice.
According to the disciplinary referral, she would be separated from other students during lunch and recess through Friday.
Jack Ellis, the superintendent for Brazos Independent School District, declined an on-camera interview. But he said the school was abiding by a state guideline that banned “minimal nutrition” foods.
“Whether or not I agree with the guidelines, we have to follow the rules,” he said.
The state, however, gives each school discretion over how to enforce the policy. Ellis said school officials had decided a stricter punishment was necessary after lesser penalties failed to serve as a deterrent.
Ellis said failing to adhere to the state’s guidelines could put federal funding in jeopardy.
According to the Texas Department of Agriculture’s website, “The Texas Public School Nutrition Policy (TPSNP) explicitly states that it does not restrict what foods or beverages parents may provide for their own children’s consumption.”
Brazos Elementary Principal Jeanne Young, said the problem, in this instance, was that the candy was provided by another student – not the girl’s parents.
The girl’s mother said the incident has taught her daughter a lesson, but not the one her teachers intended.
“I told her, ‘Leighann, unfortunately you’re learning very young that life’s not fair,’” Brazda said.
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Wild Thing’s comment……..
The girl’s mother said the incident has taught her daughter a lesson, but not the one her teachers intended. “I told her, ‘Leighann, unfortunately you’re learning very young that life’s not fair,’” Brazda said.
That’s not the lesson, lady.
The lesson is: Never Trust Hippies Running the Government.
The school’s principal and superintendent said they were simply complying with a state law that limits junk food in schools.
My country has become a bad, 1960s “B” movie. Aren’t the people currently running the country the same morons we saw running around naked and covered with mud at Woodstock
Jolly Ranchers are hardly junk food. They’re probably the least unhealthy candy.
But that’s quite beside the point—even if the student had a Snickers (Gasp! The horror!), that’s no reason to treat this little girl like this. sheesh!
….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
This is ridiculous! A Jolly Rancher? How would they treat a child with diabetes who might need a candy bar or a juice for low blood sugar? But this is what the Obamas want-keep all Americans under their thumbs. You know they want to keep tabs on our food intake and what food we buy so we all eat nutritiously. That’s BS! They have stepped way over the line with their hoity toity trailer trash with money attitudes. The teacher probably ate the candy after taking it from her too.
Detention is one thing expelling is another. Being married to a retired Teacher and having
2 daughters that are Teachers I feel something else is behind the action. If it is just a
Simple piece of candy then the punishment is way out of line. A couple of years back
A young boy in my wifes class brought his grandfathers old pocket knife to school.
Some one saw him showing it to some kids and turned him in to the principal. Well
the School has zero tolerance and he was permanently expelled. Which was a real tragedy.
When I was a kid all the boys played mumbley peg before school started. Now days
We would all go to jail.. I look back over my life and think I lived in the best of times
and thank GOD I’m not 20 years old!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Where do they think they get the right to tell parents what they can have their child eat at lunch? Parents better wake up in this country as they’re rapidly loosing parental authority over their children. Back in the early 90’s, the State of Michigan said children were a resource of the state and didn’t belong to their parents.
I’m glad my son’s are adults but now I’ve got grandchildren to worry about.
I don’t know Gator your wife must be retired for an awfully long time now. This has been coming for along time. When teaching third graders about Sex becomes more important than recess then their is a problem.
Kids are graduating from High School with a diploma that they can’t read. There has been a problem for a long time. They work for Wal-mart and have to use a calculator to do math we were taught to do in our heads. They can’t multiply, divide or add but they know how to put a condom on a Banana. They are taught abortion is a RIGHT, it is not a Right is murder. When the super abortion doctor, who murdered 68,000 babies, was shot and killed he was mourned by the Teachers Union and every leftist in the country. Had he been a Nazi they would have hung the son of a bitch.
YOu can’t discipline a teacher without a thorough review, Fire them not on your life they Have Tenure, which is manure.
When I was a kid it was a free country too. I belonged to the ‘Gun Club’ in High School, took our rifles to school every thrusday, they stayed in our lockers til it was time for the club to start, not one incident.
Now they have NO Tolerance, this is more leftist BS.
A week for a piece of candy, she is Third Grader for God sake, when I was in third grade we’d go to the ‘School store’ across the street, during recess and buy candy and gum, gum, which was a no no but not this BS of NO Tolerance crap. It was no big deal, we had to walk to school, no busses our town couldn’t afford them. The offending student had to wear it on their nose, no detention no suspension, and that was for the rest of the day, and that was it. If we lived close enough we went home for lunch, if not our Mothers packed us a lunch. The school didn’t have a cafeteria and the school wasn’t into paying for school lunches or Breakfasts as they do today.
Todays schools are nothing more than a training camp for future Useful idiots for the STATISTs who now reside in the White House and Washington D.C.
Schools have come a long way in 50 years they have shuned off the idea of teaching the 3 R’s to teaching all about communism, Sex (and don’t worry if you get pregnant we will get you an abortion, with out you parents even knowing about it) and how to avoid responsibility which use to be considered part of becoming and adult, which use to be part of the schools responsibility when working with the parents.
Thank you all your input and sharing about this is sooo good I appreciate it so much.
Just shows you how stuid “educators” are today. The law provents SCHOOLS from providing candy to kids as part of their lunch food (no Snickers, Coke, Doritos, etc.– has to be real food). That’s all. The girl who gave her the candy could’ve, maybe, gotten in trouble for “providing” candy where the school, by extension, was responsible for ensuring she had healthy food to eat. The girl was only punished for candy POSESSION in school. Which was not pohibited by law, either in its intent or specification. Nice “we were just following orders” Nurenburg defense by the school folk who take no responsibility for their stupid actions. The state just told ’em not to serve junk food or they’d lose federal money. Liberal/leftard idiots.