When Aaliyah Iglesias was caught vaping at a Texas high school, she didn’t realize how much could be taken from her.
Suddenly, the rest of her high school experience was threatened: being student council president, her role as debate team captain and walking at graduation. Even her college scholarships were at risk. She was sent to the district’s alternative school for 30 days and told she could have faced criminal charges.
Like thousands of other students around the country, she was caught by surveillance equipment that schools have installed to crack down on electronic cigarettes, often without informing students.
So, if the point of this story is schools are spending money they received for COVID-19 on vape detectors/surveillance , then they should focus on that, and the misuse of those funds. That seems like a story that should have follow up.
If they’re trying to make me feel bad because Aaliyah got in trouble for doing something the school has a zero tolerance policy for, that’s probably not going to happen. By high school you should have a pretty good grasp on how rules work. The story seems to really focus on this kid being punished for doing something she was not supposed to be doing. I am not going to comment on whether the punishment fit the crime, there’s not enough detail about that in the story.
I have a 13yo, and I do not want them picking up or being around smoking/vaping at all. I’m OK if the school has both a zero tolerance policy for vaping with progressively harsher consequences for 2nd, 3rd offenses. I’m quite OK if smoking/vaping is kept far away from school grounds.
By high school you should also have a pretty good grasp on how the punishment should fit the crime and how zero tolerance policies go way fucking overboard.
That was part of the problem with the story. How many times had this person been caught? The story doesn’t include that info. Kids push back, so the consequences need to be such that they are harsh enough to deter, without obviously ruining their lives. Seems that Ailiyah still got her scholarship, and that it mostly impacted her being able to participate in extracurricular activities in school
Considering she was already student council president and captain of a debate team and legal minimum punishments were enacted, I would guess first time.
Ya, so this is apnews… If they’re going to talk about these consequences and how she was impacted the reader shouldn’t have to guess about details that matter.
Okay, so how many times do you think a student has to be caught vaping for even half of these things to be justified?
My comment was about how in my opinion apnews did a pretty poor job with that story overall. I’m not a school administer so I have no desire to try to work out what appropriate high school punishments for various instances of breaking rules should be. I stand by my original comment on that subject.
“I am not going to comment on whether the punishment fit the crime, there’s not enough detail about that in the story.”
Edit: I will say this, The consequences must not have been harsh enough to stop her from going into the bathroom and vaping. And if they weren’t, how bad do you have to make the punishment before her, an apparently smart kid, stop breaking the zero tolerance rule?