Deer Lakes suspension for 5-year-old caused rethinking of zero tolerance policies

The boy with the toy ax has graduated.

Today, Jordan Locke is an 18-year-old, highest honors graduate of Deer Lakes High School. He'll be going to Westminster College in New Wilmington in the fall.

Thirteen years ago, he was 5 years old and in kindergarten.

And he became an example of what many considered to be over-the-top reactions to violations of "zero tolerance" policies.

For the Halloween parade at Curtisville Primary Center in 1998, Locke came to school in a firefighter's costume. He wanted to dress like one of his grandfathers, who was a firefighter.

The costume his mom bought included a small plastic ax.

He hadn't done anything with the ax, just had it on his costume.

A teacher took it and he was found in violation of the district's weapons policy.

The kindergartener served a one-day suspension.

As they'd say today, the story "went viral."

His parents, Annette and John Locke, of West Deer lobbied the school board to change the policy. Firefighters were outraged that a tool they use to save lives was considered a weapon.

District officials defended themselves and the zero tolerance policy, and chastised the news media for misinterpreting and slanting the story.

And it stuck with Jordan. Teachers remembered him as "that kid," and the case was often cited around Halloween.

Search the Internet for him, and the stories come up, as do pictures of Jordan smiling happily in his costume, holding the plastic ax.

"I've never been able to live it down, really, since it happened," Jordan said. "I've always been the kid who brought an ax to school."

Policy changed

A Deer Lakes official could not be reached to comment Friday about the weapons policy as it exists and is enforced today.

But the policy was changed in the wake of Jordan's incident, said Thomas DeBolt, of East Deer, who had served on the school board until 2009 and was its president in 1998.

"As I remember, it was adjusted so it gave the principals in the buildings more discretion about what constituted an actionable offense," DeBolt said.

"The administrator who made the decision followed the policy as it was written. Nobody could fault her on what she did," he said.

"On the other hand, that wasn't the kind of situation anybody had envisioned when the policy was developed. It was unfortunate it had worked out that way.

"It brought the weaknesses of the policy to light, and the weaknesses could be addressed."

In 16 years on the board, DeBolt said Jordan's case was among his top 10 most memorable.

"For many years after that every year whenever something happened at another district, that story also came up as a standard of comparison," he said. "I think it turned into something bigger than it needed to. I think in the end everything all worked out."

"Zero tolerance" policies proliferated at schools after the adoption of the Gun Free Schools Act, which Congress passed in 1994 in the wake of highly publicized school shootings.

Today, the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, which assists districts with writing policies, suggests districts steer away from zero tolerance, spokesman Steve Robinson said.

"When we're working with districts, we generally don't recommend zero tolerance policies," Robinson said. "We suggest that there's always some kind of language in there that allows some discretion for the superintendent to make exceptions case by case."

But zero tolerance policies remain an issue in schoos across the nation, and stories like Jordan's still periodically pop up, said Dennis Parker, director of the racial justice program of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City.

"The ACLU's position is that any kind of unthinking policy which doesn't permit any kind of discretion will invariably lead to the kind of results you're talking about," Parker said. "We believe there are more careful and effective ways of ensuring safety than by the knee-jerk application of rules that really ultimately don't make sense."

Lessons learned

The day her son served his suspension out of school, Annette Locke said she remembers Jordan ran out the front door, wanting to get on the bus to school.

"That was pretty devastating for a 5-year-old," she said. "He didn't understand why he couldn't go to school."

The story went national. It wasn't until Jordan was in middle school that the attention went away, Annette Locke said.

For years after, Annette Locke said her family got calls about it.

One was from an upset woman in another state whose daughter, also in kindergarten, didn't want to go to school after being suspended for violating a weapons policy.

Her weapon was the plastic stick inside a cheese-and-crackers snack.

"It's such an impressionable age," she said. "You want to instill in them a love of education. To have anything detract from that or give a negative experience can be traumatic to those kids.

"Luckily, thank God, it did not affect Jordan."

Parents need to step up and get involved if they think there's something that's important, and it's a good lesson to teach children, she said.

"I'm glad that we did," she said. "It helped to have a little common sense put into the policy."

Jordan wasn't without his ax for that Halloween. A custodian got it back, Annette Lock said.

Jordan didn't become a firefighter, but he still has his ax.

He said it looks just like it did then.

He's considered putting it in a display box with a "use in case of emergency" label on it.

"I can look back on it now and say that my parents did all they could to have my voice heard," Jordan said. "I was five."

Jordan says he looks back on the incident and smiles.

"It's part of my history, I guess," he said. "I kind of look at it now and I laugh."

On his college applications, Jordan struggled with whether he had to note his kindergarten suspension.

He did. And his explanation included that it brought up questions of the effectiveness of zero tolerance policies and was a precedent in many zero tolerance cases.

Aside from a mention in passing with admissions officials, the suspension didn't hurt Jordan's entry to college.

"I did fear I was going to get turned down because of it," he said.

Jordan said what he learned from it was to stand up for himself.

"You don't want to just sit back and take something. I learned that from my parents and how they handled it," he said. "They didn't make a big fuss out of it. They wanted to make sure it didn't just fall by the wayside.

"This ridiculous suspension wasn't forgotten, I guess."