Out of control, bullying public school officials continue their deplorable acts of violation against young children over incidents that puzzlingly seem to typically originate in the school lunchroom.
Recall the recent story of a boy who was suspended from school for five days after being interrogated in the Vice Principal’s office for hours on end, told he was carrying an “illegal” substance, threatened with transfer to another school and warned that he would be enrolled in a teen alcoholics support group after being called out by the lunch police for bringing a simple bottle of kombucha in his lunchbox packed by his own Mother!
Then there was the story earlier this year of a preschooler at West Hoke Elementary in North Carolina who was given a highly processed, cafeteria lunch containing pink slime chicken nuggets because the lunch police inspecting her lunchbox decided that the turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice her mother packed were not nutritious enough.
Apparently, North Carolina school officials did not learn their lesson from the huge negative publicity and backlash from that stunt because an even worse lunchroom incident has been revealed in a recent lawsuit by The Rutherford Institute.
According to the complaint Cox v the Sampson County Board of Education filed on December 6, 2012, Union Elementary School Assistant Principal Teresa Holmes allegedly strip searched 10 year old J.C. Cox as a result of the chivalrous act of helping a classmate retrieve her dropped coins from under the lunchroom table.
A press release by The Rutherford Institute on the matter describes in detail how the lunchroom incident went down all without a parent or guardian present at any time:
… on Friday, June 12, 2012, J.C. Cox, a fifth-grader attending Union Elementary School in Clinton, N.C., was in the school cafeteria eating lunch when a female classmate dropped money onto the floor.
J.C. went under the table, retrieved the coins and returned them to the girl. Upon approaching J.C.’s table, Assistant Principal Teresa Holmes, who was also in the cafeteria at the time, was informed that someone had dropped $20 on the floor, that the money was missing, and that J.C. had gone under the table in search of the missing money.
Holmes asked J.C. if he had the money and told him that unless he returned it, she would have to search him. J.C. told Holmes he did not have the money.
Holmes then ordered J.C. to come with her to her office. Holmes also called a school custodian and asked him to meet her at the office. Once there, Holmes again asked J.C. if he had the money and again, he told her “no.” J.C. even pulled out his pockets to show that he had no money.
The assistant principal then told J.C. she had no choice but to search him, and that she was within her legal right to do so. Holmes allegedly ordered J.C. to remove his shoes, socks, pants and shirt.
With J.C. stripped to his underwear, Holmes ran her finger around the waistband of his undershorts.
Holmes did not find any money on J.C. While in Holmes’ office, another teacher arrived to report that the $20 had been found on the cafeteria floor.
When J.C.’s mother later contacted the school to voice her concerns about the strip search, she was reportedly told that school personnel have the right to perform strip searches and that the assistant principal was within her rights in doing so.
Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute accuse Ms. Holmes of violating J.C.’s Fourth Amendment rights when he was inexplicably strip searched for stooping down to help out a classmate. In addition, they cite the 2009 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Safford Unif. Sch. Dist. # 1 v. Redding which ruled that school officials such as Ms. Holmes absolutely do not have the right or authority to strip search a student unless there is evidence that the child is in possession of a dangerous item.
These frequent acts of violation against children and flagrant ignoring of parental rights by public school officials must stop and hopefully with this lawsuit, The Rutherford Institute can make some positive headway in this area.
The lunchroom has clearly become a warzone in many public schools instead of a healthy environment for eating and sharing with classmates that it is intended to be.
Do you have an act of lunchtime bullying by school officials to share? Please chime in with a comment.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
If the school officials (throughout the entire USA) were really concerned about what children are eating, they should just ban kids from bringing anything from home and let the school serve “food”. This isn’t about a lunchbox and what’s in it, this is about harrassment, pure and simple. Because they can.
This is actually happening in some areas. No home packed lunches allowed.
My 17-year old son recently had an incident with the lunch tyrants at his school. In a nutshell, he was essentially protesting this new “law” about needing to have a certain number of fruits and veggies on his tray. He didn’t want any fruit and told them so. They tried to force him to take an apple and he turned his back and walked away. Of course, the vice principal came and talked to him after that. It didn’t progress any further than that, although I would have relished them calling me about it and told him next time to make sure they do. It is really so absolutely absurd. They don’t care if the stuff gets thrown in the trash, as long as it’s on their trays. What an absolute waste of resources that could be used towards improving the lunches rather than trying to police the amount of items there. Just a small, minor story but I am unbelievably proud of him for standing his ground.
If every parent made sure to be a part of the school in one way or another even if
they do lunch room once a week, the children would be treated better. Get involved parents, get to know the principle extremely well as well as the teachers and other students. I worked and helped out at the school, it was exhausting but my kids were worth it. The principle was and is a good friend of mine. I voiced my concerns to her many times and worked with her to make things better. I co-chaired and chaired events, seminars etc.
The only way to change things is to be the change yourself and that simply means getting involved and caring about the school, the staff and the kids! The other option is to home school, if you can run your business from home,or work from home you can home school. The internet also provides many, many options. The key is to protect your children and know and have input into the content of what they are learning both academically wise, socially, athletically and of course what they are being taught about their rights as a person and as an American in the Great Republic of these United States. I did it and helped lots of others! You can too, your kids are worth it!
Oh for God’s sake, people! This has NOTHING to do with unions, “indoctrination”, public schools, government or any other ignorant, paranoid nonsense that has been encouraged by corporations (yes, the enemy you all hate has most of you duped on this subject because they rely on your naiveté in these matters!). This was a stupid woman who exercised outrageously bad judgement and who works in a district who makes it possible to abuse its authority. Legislation to allow this sort of thing passes when people don’t care enough to get involved in the laws that will affect them because they are too self-absorbed to realize that the world is only your enemy if you allow it, and none of us live in own little universe, isolated from being part of a society, no matter how much we wish it were so. Honestly.
Thank you!
Amen!
@Deborah, you are so right! Thank you for posting!
Yes, thank you Deborah! Thank goodness for our legal system, which will hopefully provide redress for this student and his family.
It seems we’ve lost the ability to get along with people we don’t agree with. Who can I blame??
Sarah, have you written about the case where the middle schooler was strip searched in front of his peers after he was accused of having marijuana? I can’t remember if I read about it on your site or Natural News or Drudge Report. The boy didn’t want it done in front of the other students because he was wearing Superman underwear that day. They did it anyway, found no pot, and now he gets teased about the underwear he was wearing that day. I mention the underwear because that should help you find the article via Google.
This is hard to digest! Unfortunately, the school staff is protected by the unions and they are not going anywhere. Poor kid, having to go through all that!
Where was the boy’s father? Why didn’t he get his butt down to that school and read the riot act to that worthless piece of trash masquerading as an assistant principal? My god – if that had happened to me as a child, my father would have had have had her by the neck.
People – listen up. If you allow this crap to happen to your kids – then you’re just a culpable as the slime who do it. Why isn’t that harpy being charged with child molestation? Suppose a male administrator stripped a 10 year old girl – how far do you think he’d get before he saw the wrong end of a room full of steel bars?
Take charge of your own – because no one else will.
one of the endless reasons we have chosen to homeschool, even at a big financial loss for our household.
Look into after school programings snacks….an apple is considered water & to cut costs supplies like cups are not to be used to supply the children with drinks in a 3 hour period your told to let them use the water fountain….I always encouraged mine to bring their own water bottle.
Everyone is saying the solution is to homeschool. But, everyone cannot do this and this should NOT be permitted to go on in schools either!