A 7-year-old boy at a small school in rural Virginia has been suspended over pointing a pencil, a la gun, at another student and making firing noises.
The boy, Christopher Marshall, is a student at Driver Elementary in Suffolk. He was playing with another student and pointing pencils during class, the local Fox station reported. A teacher asked that they stop.
“When I asked him about it, he said, ’Well, I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,’” said Paul Marshall, the boy’s father, in the Fox report. “It’s as simple as that.”
The teacher didn’t see it that way and reported the second-grader, citing zero-tolerance policies. He was suspended for two days, Fox reported.
“A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made,” said Suffolk Public Schools spokeswoman Bethanne Bradshaw in the Fox report.
The boy’s father, a former Marine, said the school overreacted.
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• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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