A quick update on a story from earlier this week… Marie Morrow, a 17-year-old senior at Cherokee Trail High School in Aurora, CO is head back to school.
Morrow was suspend on Feb. 5 after other students observed prop rifles used by her Young Marines drill team in her Dodge Durango which was parked at the Aurora high school campus and alerted school officials.
Cherry Creek Superintendent Mary Chesley ruled Friday that Morrow could return next Wednesday. Students will be off Monday for President’s Day and Tuesday for a teacher in-service day.
Morrow won’t be in class until Friday. The senior plans to visit the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., which she hopes to attend after graduation.
Her case got plenty of attention from the mainstream media and talk radio.
“I stayed positive throughout the whole thing,” she said. “It was mainly dealing with the media, doing interviews and all that stuff. I miss everything about school right now.”
She was bounced from Cherokee Trail on Feb. 5 after officials, alerted by other students, found prop rifles in her Dodge Durango parked at the Aurora high school campus.
Morrow, commander of the Douglas County Young Marines drill team, kept them in her vehicle because her drill team is preparing for an April 18 competition at the Air Force Academy.
The length of her expulsion was the six days she already has been out of school.
“They gave her time served,” said her mother, Jenifer McGrew. “We are thrilled this whole entire ordeal is over. It’s been a crazy week.”
The school district’s decision came a day after Morrow’s expulsion hearing, by an independent hearing officer. During the hearing, Morrow was praised by Cherry Creek Schools officials, Parker’s mayor and retired military personnel as a bright, focused and highly responsible student who simply forgot she left the prop guns in her vehicle.
But a “zero-tolerance” state law requires expulsion of any student seen with a “dangerous weapon” on school grounds or at school events unless the student has permission. Under the law, dangerous weapons include facsimiles that could be mistaken for real ones. Read the rest…
These ham-fisted zero tolerance, zero intelligence, zero commonsense laws have to go there was no reason for Morrow to be suspended much less expelled.