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Autistic Student Gets $364 Ticket For Dropping an F-Bomb in Class

Posted on October 15th, 2009 9:41am by Zac Crain
Filed under Crime, Education

KRLD has the story here. It happened at Richardson’s Westwood Junior High at the end of last year; the teacher told the vice principal, who told the Dallas police officer who works the campus, who gave the kid a ticket. His mom says she’ll fight the $364 ticket, which I guess is why this is coming up now.

I’m of two minds on this: on the one hand, if you’re going to have your kid in a mainstream school, you have to expect there will be bumps along the way. On the other: I think if you’re going to allow autistic kids in your mainstream school, you have to expect there will be bumps along the way. I predict the media attention will get the ticket dismissed, and I don’t think that’s the worst thing in the world.

3 Comments to “Autistic Student Gets $364 Ticket For Dropping an F-Bomb in Class”

JS @ October 15th, 2009 at 10:04 am

The teacher, the vice principal, and the cop all ought to get tickets for being effin stupid.
SM @ October 15th, 2009 at 10:49 am

Autistic kids don’t have enough problems in their day-to-day lives? Gimme an F’n break!

How about the teacher and VP practice a little tolerance and do what they’re paid to do….teach. How about commiting your resources towards helping the kid understand his error and helping to correct it?

And the cop. Hard for me to believe he can’t be more productive in a school setting than citing an autistic kid for cursing.

What is wrong with our world?
AD @ October 15th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

I am a high school teacher. If I told someone every time I heard a curse word, then I’d get almost nothing else done all day. Kids should be corrected, then written up upon their second offense. They are teenagers! If the worst thing they do all day is drop an F bomb, we should celebrate them. It’s not about lowering standards of conduct, but rather about embracing them and their errors, AND remembering what it was like to be in high school. I don’t want to hear foul language in my hallways, but I also don’t want to make otherwise good kids feel bad because they made a simple, relatively harmless error in judgment. Autistic kids, while mainstreamed, should be met at their own levels of ability, understanding, and conduct. They should NOT be treated like every other student in every regard. I have trouble understanding the motivations behind the teacher and VP’s actions. I assume that the police officer, once made aware, had no other choice but to enforce the rules.