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A Waterbury fifth-grader has been reinstated in school following intervention by the ACLU of Connecticut.
Sandra Staub, ACLU-CT's legal director, wrote the principal of Tinker Elementary School urging immediate action to get the suspended 10-year-old back in class.
According to the child's parents, she wrote, "the child was searched and interrogated for over two hours without any notice to or permission from his parents even after the police were brought in to the school's investigation [of classmates' report that he had brought marijuana to school].
"Furthermore," she added, "we understand that the suspension was imposed without any meaningful opportunity for anyone on the child's behalf to confront the allegations against him or to be heard in response to the allegations or in connection with any proposed punishment."
Whether or not the child is innocent, Staub wrote, it appears that "the school has violated the child's constitutional rights, including his right to due process, to be free from unwarranted searches and seizures and to refuse to make a statement that might incriminate himself under the Fifth Amendment."
The parents's rights under the school's own disciplinary code were also violated, she wrote.
Read the whole letter:
ACLU to Tinker Elementary School
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