mom or principal, who's right?

02/23/2010

From the westpalm FL news paper.
(I know the principal personally. A few years a go I spent a few days with and his family going to spring training games.)

HOBE SOUND, FL -- The day started out like most for Laura Cancio and her family.

She readied her children for school, repeatedly reminding her fourth-grade son to assemble his lunch.

The food was laid out. All he had to do was put it in his bag. But, anxious to play video games during the last few minutes before the family hit the road, the boy forgot.

Cancio realized her son’s mistake only after she dropped him off at Sea Wind Elementary in Hobe Sound.

Hoping to teach him a lesson about responsibility, she decided to let him go without food until he got home at 2:30 p.m.

He had eaten a large breakfast of cereal, fruit and juice. It didn’t seem like a big deal. She sent an e-mail to her son’s teacher:

“Everett forgot to pack his lunch even after several prompts to do so. Please do not provide him with any food. Thank you.”

She got a polite reply, logged off the computer and thought that was that.

But Everett’s teacher forwarded the message to Principal Lawrence Green, who had a different take.

Green responded in an e-mail:

“Mrs. Cancio, although I understand that Everett needs to be more responsible and you would like to teach him this skill, we cannot deny any child a lunch. This would be against the law. We can get him a school lunch and you can reimburse us at a later date.”

When Everett got home, he told his mother the cafeteria gave him a cheese sandwich. He also said a school official told him that what his mom proposed to do was illegal.

Cancio felt undermined.

To her, it boiled down to this question:

“Do I not have the right to make these physical decisions for my child?”

Her encounter illustrates the delicate balance between parental rights and school responsibility. When our children spend so much oftheir day at school, how far should the school go to obey a parent’s wishes?

Despite Green’s e-mail to Cancio, there is no law or Martin County School District policy that dictates whether a school should feed a child in this situation. Green later backed off the claim that not feeding Everett would be illegal.

“It boils down to the administrator, the principal, doing what hethinks is in the best interest of the student,” district spokeswoman Cathy Brennan said.

Green told me he thought he was doing what was best for Everett on that day in December.

“It was my feeling that we needed to feed the child. Research has shown that a child that is nourished is going to perform better,” hesaid.

Cancio declined to pay for the lunch because she did not request it,so the school covered the cost. Green has never had a parent complain about giving a student a free lunch. In fact, he’s received thank you notes for such gestures in the past.

But it still upsets Cancio. Green defied her, as she sees it.

Nobody has ever died from missing one meal, she said. Plus, her son is a picky eater who has been known to throw his lunch out. She thought not having lunch was a natural consequence for forgetting it that morning.

“I made my wishes known, and he disregarded that,” she said. She asked Green for a written apology but has never received one.

Now, let’s take this debate a couple steps further.

What if a parent was trying to teach her child about punctuality,and she told the school not to let the student into class if he showed up late? Brennan raised this rhetorical question to me.

“Where would you draw the line?” she asked.

Green made a similar comparison. What if a parent wanted his or her child to stand in the corner all day? Should the school comply?

There’s one key difference between those examples and Cancio’s request, as I see it. Skipping lunch would not directly interfere with a student’s ability to attend class. Standing in a corner or being shutout of school clearly would.

As a parent, I don’t think I would have made the same decision Cancio did, at least not for an elementary-age child.

Still, I respect her right to make such a call — so long as it doesn’t violate any laws or school policies.

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I recognize this happened in FL and not MA but if in MA, that mother would be in trouble

MASSACHUSETTS LAW
section 119 chapter 51 A

Section 51A. Any physician, medical intern, hospital personnel engaged in the examination, care or treatment of persons, medical examiner, psychologist, emergency medical technician, dentist, nurse, chiropractor, podiatrist, optometrist, osteopath, public or private school teacher, educational administrator, guidance or family counselor, day care worker or any person paid to care for or work with a child in any public or private facility, or home or program funded by the commonwealth or licensed pursuant to the provisions of chapter twenty-eight A, which provides day care or residential services to children or which provides the services of child care resource and referral agencies, voucher management agencies, family day care systems and child care food programs, probation officer, clerk/magistrate of the district courts, parole officer, social worker, foster parent, firefighter or policeman, licensor of the office of child care services or any successor agency, school attendance officer, allied mental health and human services professional as licensed pursuant to the provisions of section one hundred and sixty-five of chapter one hundred and twelve, drug and alcoholism counselor, psychiatrist, and clinical social worker, priest, rabbi, clergy member, ordained or licensed minister, leader of any church or religious body, accredited Christian Science practitioner, person performing official duties on behalf of a church or religious body that are recognized as the duties of a priest, rabbi, clergy, ordained or licensed minister, leader of any church or religious body, or accredited Christian Science practitioner, or person employed by a church or religious body to supervise, educate, coach, train or counsel a child on a regular basis, who, in his professional capacity shall have reasonable cause to believe that a child under the age of eighteen years is suffering physical or emotional injury resulting from abuse inflicted upon him which causes harm or substantial risk of harm to the child's health or welfare including sexual abuse, or from neglect, including malnutrition, or who is determined to be physically dependent upon an addictive drug at birth, shall immediately report such condition to the department by oral communication and by making a written report within forty-eight hours after such oral communication; provided, however, that whenever such person so required to report is a member of the staff of a medical or other public or private institution, school or facility, he shall immediately either notify the department or notify the person in charge of such institution, school or facility, or that person's designated agent, whereupon such person in charge or his said agent shall then become responsible to make the report in the manner required by this section. Any such hospital personnel preparing such report, may take or cause to be taken, photographs of the areas of trauma visible on a child who is the subject of such report without the consent of the child's parents or guardians. All such photographs or copies thereof shall be sent to the department together with such report. Any such person so required to make such oral and written reports who fails to do so shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars. Any person who knowingly files a report of child abuse that is frivolous shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars.