School Suspends and Charges Student for Father’s Fishing Knife Found in Car

The performance of Northwest High School officials in Clarksville, Tennessee joins the lineup of Stupid Educator Tricks, featured on this blog. The officials  are accompanied by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s dept, which is levying weapons charges against a high school kid who made the mistake of borrowing his father’s car.

David Duren-Sanner’s future is put on hold, because his father, a commercial fisherman, had a fishing knife inside the car, which David parked on school property. David gave permission for a random search of his car to be searched during the school’s lockdown exercise, likely because he had no idea that his father’s knife was there.

Now David has 10 days suspension, 90 days at an alternative school, on probation, and is facing weapons charges. Peggy Duren, David’s grandmother, with whom he is living, claims that this is his first disciplinary trip to the H.S. principal’s office. “Guilty until proven innocent” is how she describes the zero tolerance policy to Clarksville’s News Channel 5.

There is a petition online if you’d like to weigh in on one more whacko method of teaching kids to disrespect authority, exercised by the Northeast high school officials and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s dept.

Or you could click on the name and tell Principal  Galea Jefferies exactly how you feel about the handling of this situation.

Perhaps they should be asked what positive incentive would a kid have to  obey the law, if he can be so heavily  penalized for a normally legal item which is found  in a car that he has borrowed??

North West High School, Clarksville, TN
North West High School, Clarksville, TN