It’s been a long time since I was in school, but throughout my school years, teachers and administrators were approachable. You could ask a teacher or principal most anything, and as long as you asked respectfully, it was okay. I don’t know if I ever needed to speak to anybody at the “county office,” but I’m sure that school system staff would have been willing to answer questions.
We live in different times now, however, and a high school senior received a seven-day suspension from school for asking a simple question. Parker Jensen wanted to know why some classrooms at his school didn’t have American flags in them.
Project Baltimore broke the story that Jensen, on March 28, withdrew from his class and drove to the Baltimore County Board of Education building hoping to speak with district leadership about missing American flags at Towson High School.
According to Baltimore County School Board Policy 6307 and Maryland Education Code 7-105 an American flag must be displayed in each classroom. But Jensen said some classrooms at Towson High did not have flags. So, he went to the Board of Education to find out why and recorded much of his visit.
It’s a reasonable question, isn’t it? And Jensen isn’t the model for a disruptive student; he’s planning on joining the Marine Corps after graduation.
When a reporter asked Jensen what he expected to happen when he went to the school system office, he replied, “I thought that someone would just come out, speak with me for five minutes, and then I’d be on my way.”
Instead, the school system kept him waiting for an hour. Jensen recorded his wait because, he said, “They are recording us at all times.” The long wait soon became a nightmare.
“But Jensen did not get answers,” WBFF reports. “Instead, BCPS called the police. And the 18-year-old was told by Richard Muth, the School Safety Emergency Manager, that he was immediately suspended for seven days.”
A seven-day suspension for asking about missing flags in classrooms, especially when state and local laws require them. For an upstanding student like Jensen, that suspension could have a detrimental effect on his college chances after his time in the Marines is over.
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Needless to say, Jensen is suing the school system.
“He was summarily suspended without any due process whatsoever, which every student in Baltimore County and Maryland has the right to and they stripped him of that within five seconds,” said Sarah Spitalnick, the attorney representing Jensen in his suit.
Spitalnick told WBFF’s Chris Papst that the school system “absolutely” violated Jensen’s constitutional rights and referred to the incident as “definitely… some kind of bullying.”
“In the complaint filed on April 3, Spitalnick claims BCPS, America’s 22nd largest school system with a $3 billion budget, acted unlawfully when it suspended Jensen for a week,” WBFF reports.
But here’s the kicker: after calling in five police cars to handle Jensen and slapping him with a seven-day suspension, the school system placed flags in the classrooms where they were missing. The school system told WBFF in an email that “As of April 1, flags have been installed in the classrooms that did not have them.”
Talk about insult to injury. I know I’m not alone when I say that I hope Jensen’s suit is a rousing success.
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