text: A Colorado first grader was suspended because he pointed his finger in a manner which exhibited a “gun shape” and said, “You’re dead” to a Stratton Meadows Elementary School classmate. The child’s father, Austin Thurston, felt a school suspension over the Monday incident involving Elijah Thurston was excessive. 
   
   Elijah Thurston, 6, was suspended from Stratton Meadows Elementary School for one day. An official at the Colorado public school reportedly explained to the first grader what the word “dead” meant and told him not to “confuse” activities in gameplay with reality. 
   
   “I know they have zero tolerance, but more of a maybe no recess. Going as far as a one-day suspension is a little extreme for a 6-year-old in a first-grade class,” Austin Thurston said during an interview with KRDO News. “Of course I think he was playing. What 6-year-old doesn’t play cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians?” 
   
   A Harrison School District 2 representative told the local media that the Stratton Meadows Elementary School suspension for the finger gun was appropriate. The spokesperson would not elaborate on the finger gun pointing incident, stating student privacy. The suspension will be included on Elijah Thurston’s permanent record. 
   
   Austin Thurston had this to say when asked what he and his wife has discussed with Elijah in regards to guns. 
   
   “We just told him there’s a time and a place for everything, and we told him school is never a place for that. We let him know that the guns in the wrong hands will be very dangerous. He knows the difference between really doing that, and just putting your finger up and saying, ‘boom you’re dead.’ We made sure he understands the severity of what he said.” 
   
   The Colorado first grader is writing a letter of apology to the school and stating in his own words that he understands his actions. The apology letter was not required by the school district. The school suspension for the finger gun-pointing incident is just one of many cases where a young student was punished for a similar act, making a paper gun or a gun shape out of food, or bringing a toy gun to school. 
   
   Many adults can still remember taking guns to school and making or buying pretend swords and knives to go with Halloween costumes for school parties. Many schools in America used to have gun clubs and shooting teams. During this long-gone era, school shootings were not making national headlines. 
   
   What do you think about the Colorado first grader being suspended for making a finger gun shape? 
   
   [Image via: Shutterstock.com] ||||| A Virginia couple has filed a lawsuit against their son’s school, the school resource officer, and the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office after their 11-year-old son was kicked out of school for bringing a plant — that wasn’t pot — to school, the Roanoke Times is reporting. 
   
   The troubles for the unnamed sixth-grader, identified only as RMB, began in September 2014. Melvin Williams, the lawyer for Bruce and Linda Bays, the boy’s parents, says that the boy was at school when word somehow got to school administrators that he had a bag of marijuana and a lighter in his backpack. 
   
   “We know they relied on ‘tips’ that after the fact turn out to be less than reliable.” 
   
   The boy was in gym class when he was summoned to the principal’s office. There, the principal, in the presence of the school resource officer, emptied the boy’s backpack and found a bag containing leaves and a lighter. He was immediately suspended for 10 days, pending an administrative hearing, then kicked out of school for a year. The school resource officer also filed marijuana possession charges against the youth in juvenile court. 
   
   There was only one problem: three tests on the plant that the boy brought to school determined that it wasn’t marijuana, according to Raw Story. 
   
   “The field test came back not inconclusive, but negative. Yet [Resource Officer Calohan] went to a magistrate and swore he possessed marijuana at school.” 
   
   RMB’s parents believe that he was likely the victim of a prank; RMB rides the same bus with high school students and his parents believe an older teen likely put the substance into his backpack without RMB knowing about it, a claim the school has rejected. 
   
   The school maintains that the fact that the substance the boy allegedly brought to school turned out not to be marijuana is irrelevant; under the school’s Zero Tolerance drug policy, “lookalike” drugs are also forbidden. 
   
   The case illustrates how schools’ so-called “Zero Tolerance” policies, while well-intentioned, can sometimes be taken to ridiculous lengths. Earlier this month, according to this Inquisitr report, a first-grader in Colorado was suspended, under his school’s zero-tolerance violence policy, for pointing his finger in the shape of a gun. 
   
   RMB will be allowed to resume attending school — at an alternative school and under strict probationary guidelines — on Monday, but his parents want him back in his old school, with his record expunged. 
   
   RMB’s parents claim that, since their son’s suspension for bringing not-marijuana to school, the gifted and talented student has been withdrawn, and is being treated by a child psychiatrist for depression and panic attacks. 
   
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target: – The details of the story are hazy, but what's certain is this: An 11-year-old was suspended from school in Virginia after school officials in late September found what they believed was a marijuana leaf in his backpack, along with a lighter. (A suit filed in the case alleges the assistant principal found "crumpled leaves.") The boy, identified only as RMB, was suspended for 364 days for alleged "possession of marijuana," and he faced charges in juvenile court. Turns out, however, that three tests found the leaf wasn't pot at all, and the juvenile charges were dropped, the Roanoke Times reports. But things with the school weren't so simple: Only now, six months after the case began, has RMB been able to return to class at a different school, and he remains on probation. That time away has taken a toll. The son of Bruce and Linda Bays of Bedford County, both teachers, used to be an easygoing, upbeat child. Now he gets panic attacks, suffers from depression, and fears authority figures. After a disciplinary hearing, his mother tells the Times, "he just broke down and said his life was over. He would never be able to get into college; he would never be able to get a job." He's being treated by a psychiatrist, and his parents have launched a federal lawsuit against Bedford County Schools and the county sheriff's office. But the suit could face a hurdle when it comes to school drug policy: It also bans "imitation controlled substances," defined as a "pill, capsule, tablet, or other item which is not a controlled substance." In the meantime, it remains unclear how the leaf got in RMB's bag. The Inquisitr points to concerns about "zero tolerance" school policies, noting that this month, a 6-year-old was suspended for shaping his hand like a gun—and it wasn't the first such suspension.