The latest in the saga of a second-grader who sparked national headlines when he was suspended from school for nibbling his Pop-Tart pastry into the shape of a gun is more bad news: The child’s record cannot now be expunged, administrators said on Wednesday.
They refused to hear the appeal, The Baltimore Sun reported.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Joshua Welch’s school records will forever reflect his suspension. But parents lost their initial request for an appeal, and they now must take their fight to the next level. The family’s attorney, Robin Ficker, said the case will now go before the county school board.
“If this school can’t educate a 7-year-old without putting him out of school, how are they going to deal with 17-year-olds?” Mr. Ficker asked, the Sun reported.
The boy, age 8, was suspended for two days from Park Elementary School in Maryland in March. School officials said he fashioned his Pop-Tart into something that looked too much like a gun. The boy, however, said to a television station in the days after his suspension that he didn’t mean to make a gun.
“It was already a rectangle,” he said, in the media report. “I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top of it and kind of looked like a gun. But it wasn’t.”
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• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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