So why is expulsion no longer a last resort, and how could anyone suspend a child for something as innocuous as bringing Midol to school? "Parents want to be assured that their children will be safe," says Bill Modzeleski, associate deputy undersecretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education. "I assume that, yes, with 52 million kids and 15,000 school districts there probably are some policies that some individuals call harsh. But there are other parents who say, 'They're not harsh, because those are the same policies that are protecting my son and daughter.'"

School districts and zero tolerance proponents like Modzeleski say that common sense must prevail -- that school boards do take extenuating circumstances into account at expulsion hearings and that all children are offered due process. But for parents trying to keep their children in school, common sense seems like the last thing on the minds of the administrators.

Graduate student Howard Hastings, 52, whose 14-year-old son Karel was expelled in 2000 for giving a joint to another child at his Fairfax County, Va., middle school, says that during his son's expulsion hearing, an earlier 10-day absence was seen as suspicious and added to the school's proof of Karel's guilt. It didn't matter that the absence was due to a wrestling injury that left Karel -- a local wrestling star -- unable to walk for over a week.

Hastings was furious with Karel for his marijuana experimentation, he says, and planned to punish him. He immediately met with the school administration and told Karel to be as honest as possible about the joint he'd given his friend, assuming that if they "played by their rules and did everything the school required," Karel might be readmitted. But the administration was determined to expel Karel, says Hastings, and by the time the school's discipline measures added up -- mandating that Karel attend multiple Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and group therapy every week on top of expulsion -- Hastings felt that the school's punishment was more than enough. In fact, he now wishes that he hadn't pushed Karel to be completely honest with the school.

"If we had to do it all over again, I might've said, 'Just keep silent,'" says Hastings. "We trusted [the school]. We're used to going in and talking to a teacher about how our kid is doing. But they weren't interested in him at all."

Fairfax County School District coordinator of community relations Paul Regnier notes that Karel pled guilty in court to possession of a controlled substance, and that "the school district felt there was evidence of distribution" -- which factored into its decision to expel.

Mary LeBlanc, the Louisiana mother whose 17-year-old son Adam was arrested for a drawing, says that when the school found a box cutter on her son, they immediately interpreted it as proof of Adam's dangerous nature -- even though she repeatedly told the administration that he needed it at his long-term after-school job at a family-owned grocery store. "They weren't having any part of that," she says. "My son was obviously planning something."

Ascension Parish assistant superintendent Donald Sogny, who wouldn't comment specifically on Adam's case, says that the media only gets half the story. "I'm not going to air a child's dirty laundry," he says. "We can tell you a lot more that might convince you that maybe it wasn't a small thing." He also notes that not every child recommended for expulsion ends up expelled: In fact, two cases in his district last month were "modified significantly," he says.

"Zero tolerance looks good on paper," says Diane Rohman, 38, whose son was expelled from high school in the same district where she works as a middle school art teacher in Stafford County, Va. Rohman estimates that her middle school has already expelled about three students this year -- one for carrying over-the-counter cold medicine. "It makes it look like we're doing something to make the schools safe. But I don't think anyone [in the community] is really aware of what it is."

Rohman's 17-year-old son, Anthony, her only child, was expelled on the first day of his senior year in high school last September after administrators found a marijuana seed in the back seat of his car. Rohman claims the seed came from a boy who was riding in the back seat of the car. "They call it due process, but I have never walked into a situation where I felt that nothing I said would've mattered," says Rohman of her son's expulsion hearing. "I knew it was hopeless -- appeals never go through. The attorneys said it was a no-win situation with the school." It seemed especially unjust, she says, "because I'm a colleague of these people. It made me angrier."

As a single parent on a teacher's salary, Rohman couldn't afford private school tuition, and, like many districts, the other public schools in the county wouldn't accept an expelled student. So Rohman sent Anthony to live with her brother in Maryland, four hours away. She visits him every few weeks, but the separation has been tough. "I knew next year that he'd be going away to college," she says, "but when it happens within a week -- I just wasn't mentally prepared for it."

The Stafford County Public School District declined to comment on Anthony's case.

Hastings and his wife also sent their son to live with relatives -- Karel's grandmother, across the country in Montana -- for seven months. As much as they hated the separation from their son, says Hastings, it was better than keeping him in the local alternative school, where, ironically, what was designed as rehabilitation for Karel's "drug problem" ended up putting him at much greater risk. "He was the only little kid there," says Hastings. "Some of those kids were 18, smoking pot behind the building with no supervision." Hastings accompanied his son to school every day, worked on his dissertation at a local library, then drove Karel the 45 minutes back home.

Oftentimes, parents' lives are put on hold as they spend months -- or years -- defending their child. Hastings, a Ph.D. student in cultural studies at George Mason University, still hasn't finished graduate school. "I hoped I could get my dissertation wrapped up in that year, and now I still don't have it," he says. "Almost immediately after Karel's expulsion most of my time was taken up driving him to various things -- to appointments with the school, to the mandatory AA meetings and therapy." Setting aside his degree has affected his family's finances, he says. "It's cut our earning power. If I don't have the degree, I can't get the job. And I've had to keep paying tuition."

"At the beginning you think, OK, well, this is going to be an annoyance," says D.C. lawyer Paul Brown, 55, whose 17-year-old learning-disabled son was expelled early in his freshman year. "But it's a two-week suspension and then expulsion and it just goes on and on and on. I thought, well, I'm sure the school will be reasonable -- but by the time you realize you should've gotten a lawyer, it's too late."

Brown's son brought a toy gun, and real ammunition, to the bus stop to scare the kids who called him a "fag" on a daily basis. "I would have punished him severely," Brown wrote in an e-mail. But by acting in loco parentis, the school superseded Brown's parental decisions. "Since the school came down so hard on him, I had to shift gears to defend my son. He had no other defenders. I went from feeling that parents and teachers were united in educating my son to feeling the school system was the enemy." The district allowed his son into a neighboring public school (he'll graduate this spring), but only after hiring a personal security guard to escort Brown's son everywhere on campus.

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