Instead I just kept them in my backpack and downed them while sitting in the back row, I even learned to knock them back without water.

The problem with the zero-tolerance law is that it is a LAW, as opposed to a guideline. Laws are attempts to mark an exact border between what is acceptable and what is not. All laws fail to do this properly, because you are illegal (and thus entirely condemned) on one side and legal (and therefore tacitly approved) on the other.

Now we want to add on top of a bad law yet another law that PROHIBITS a principal from doing this or that. Really? Absolutely prohibits under ANY circumstances?

Instead of turning another situation that we were once able to handle with common sense into yet another set of absolute prohibitions and forced actions, why not repeal or reword the first law to attach wiggle room for individual judgement?

Yehuda

(fo fanny fanny fee fie fo fanny nanny)

These policies are usually created by state/city school boards/districts, not teachers. I say this because you seem to really be emphasizing the pension angle here. In my city most of these board members are unelected and appointed by politicians. They’re mostly wealthy business people, or professional charter-bug education “reformers” and anti-union/labor in their views. I honestly don’t know how this originated in Maryland, but I doubt it was with a teacher or rank and file worker worried about their pension.

I wonder how these zero-tolerance policies sound to RKBA Republicans?  (And I note the bill’s sponsor is R.) On the one hand, they’re “tough” but they’re also “politically correct.”  Decisions, decisions.