Following a firestorm of negative national reaction, a 17-year-old Georgia high school student will be allowed to return to class after being banned from the school for three days for refusing to hang up his cell phone on his military Mom who was calling him from Iraq.
A major media and Internet furor was ignited when the story came to light about how Kevin Francois was suspended for 10 days due to the incident. You can read background on it in our post here — and the many readers’ response to it. Now, according to CNN:
Kevin Francois was initially suspended for 10 days for what Spencer High School officials said was his use of profanity after a teacher interrupted a cell phone conversation he was having with his mother.
Her name is Sgt. 1st Class Monique Bates, The Associated Press reported.
The suspension gained national attention Friday, prompting a flood of e-mails to school officials. By Friday afternoon, they told Francois his 10-day suspension would be shortened to the three already served.
“All I want to do is just go back to school,” Francois said.
But there still are two versions of what happened. And keep this perspective in mind in mind when you read them.
THE DISTRICT SAYS THIS:
Muscogee County School District Superintendent John Phillips Jr. said Friday the suspension was not because of the phone call, but the result of Francois’ reaction to the teacher interrupting it.
“The suspension was really incidental to the telephone, it was the behavior of the student, using profanity, screaming at the teacher,” Phillips said.
“He became very belligerent and very threatening to her” when she asked him to turn over the phone, Phillips said.
“He said he was 17 years old and he would do what he wanted to do,” Phillips told CNN-affiliate WTVM.
The teacher took him to the principal’s office, where “he became very unruly and out of control,” said Phillips. “It was escalating to a point where they were getting ready to call security.”
AND THE STUDENT SAYS THIS:
“I was just talking to them and they wouldn’t listen to me about talking to my mom,” he said. “I didn’t curse at them.”
Francois received the call from his mother, who left for duty in Iraq in January, during a lunch break.
Phillips said Francois did not tell the teacher he was talking to his mother in Iraq.
“I’m sure if she was aware of that, she would have acted much differently in dealing with the matter,” Phillips said.
So the Superintendent is not using the word, but basically implying that the boy is lying.
“We try to protect instructional time. We try to make sure the environment in the school is appropriate,” Phillips said. “The young man knows what the rules and regulations are.”
Fair enough. But here’s ANOTHER QUOTE from the AP:
But Francois insists that he immediately told the teacher he was speaking to his mother: “I told her in a calm voice: “I’m on the phone with my Mom in Iraq. I’m not going to give you the phone.’ ”
Francois said he did become frustrated when the teacher took his phone. “I got some attitude,” he said. “But I didn’t curse. I just couldn’t understand why I couldn’t talk to her. I kept pleading and pleading.”
Who to believe? It’s the reader’s call, but it certainly seems like the side in this most taken to task in an avalanche of furious reaction was the district which could have perhaps faced some legal or other complications if the student had been kept out of school the full 10 days. The Columbus Ledger-Eqnquirer has a piece on the wave of reaction to this story (which it first covered) and includes this on the reaction:
“It absolutely blew my mind,” said Martin, a veteran of almost 30 years ago who said he was quite familiar with Fort Benning and Columbus. “I’m outraged to the insensitivity shown by the school officials to this young man…As mad as I was reading your story, I was more upset by the response of the school system on their Web site. Their release outraged me even more.”
The Muscogee County School District received hundreds of each and Spencer High, where Kevin attends, had an avalanche of phone calls that almost shut down the system.
One example came from retired Lt. Commander Theron Davis of Oroville, Wash., to the author of the story, Angelique Soenarie: “The incident you reported at Spencer HS concerning Kevin Francois shows the kind of compassionless, Robotic Zero Tolerance kind of behavior that is all too common in the USA today.”
The newspaper also received the following e-mail from 1963 Baker High grad, PhD. and retired Air Force colonel Herbert Smith: “Regarding the young man at Spencer who was suspended for trying to talk to his mother in Iraq, should he wish some long-distance tutoring, I’d be glad to provide my services, gratis, if he has access to a computer.”
John Burnett of Dexter, Mich., e-mailed the following to the paper: “I would expect that type of irrational behavior on the part of the teacher and administrator here in heavily unionized and liberal Michigan but not in your state. It also occurred to me that petty tyranny as a managerial technique has been pretty well discounted as an acceptable way to handle students.”
One e-mail was directed to Spencer Principal Olivia Rutledge by James Mason of Stephenson, Va., and copied to the Ledger-Enquirer: “I respect that you must have rules and that he should not have acted defiantly. But there is a time for mercy and this is it. A young man whose father is dead and whose mother is defending our country in a dangerous and far-away land has enough grief already without being dealt with in a one-size-fits-all manner. Your teacher and your administration should have dealt with this situation in a more understanding way from the outset.”
Who to believe? You decide. But no matter what, perhaps in a district with so many military kids there will be a bit more care taken that students aren’t cut off and penalized from taking what could be the last cell call they ever get from a parent who is serving in Harm’s Way.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.