First-grader suspended after crossing out yearbook photo
Comments 7 | Recommend 0Student said she was bullied
May 19, 2010 11:07:00 PM
It's the phone call every parent fears — and Crystal Ledger remembers receiving it Monday afternoon.
Angela Huerta, principal at April Lane Elementary School in Yuba City, told Ledger it wasn't a call she wanted to make but asked if Ledger could come to the school office, Ledger recounted.
"I thought there was going to be an ambulance," Ledger said. "It sounded like something tragic."
When the parent of 7-year-old Natalie Ledger walked into the principal office's, she saw her daughter safe in the room — and a copy of the school yearbook.
She heard Huerta say that the first-grader had a one-day suspension for scratching out the photograph of a classmate. Natalie, who said the youth has bullied her, also had written in her yearbook that the classmate was rude.
Crystal Ledger's first reaction was relief that no accident had happened — and then surprise at the one-day suspension of her daughter for "disruption."
She sat in the kitchen of her home Wednesday with neighbor Anna Kirkland. The two talked about how they believe April Lane school officials overreacted to Natalie's action — and underreacted when Kirkland's 7-year-old son Blake left school two weeks ago because of bullying by another student.
