Below is the official press release from the Newport-Mesa School District regarding the story posted yesterday about the elementary school boy suspended from school for having kombucha tea in his lunchbox which school administration deemed with no testing or due diligence to violate the district’s drug and alcohol policy.
It appears that the school must fear the legal ramifications of their over the top reaction as they are spinning the story already.
The statement insists that the child was not suspended and no disciplinary action was taken.
You call keeping a child in the school office for the entire day, interrogating him about where/when he obtained this “illegal” beverage, telling him he may have to transfer to another school, attempting to sign him up for a youth alcoholics program and then having him sign a 5 day suspension notice “no disciplinary action?”
Revoking the suspension does NOT mean the suspension and interrogation somehow never happened! And, Police Officers in uniform (per a statement from the child’s mother who had another meeting yesterday – this time with the Principal) were called into the office to assist with the child’s possibly illegal interrogation since the child was questioned about any medicines he was taking etc and there was no attorney or parent/guardian present. Whether or not the officers were already on campus is immaterial.
I do hope the parents consider legal action to be played out in a court of law. A very strong possibility exists that their rights and that of their son were horribly violated and doing nothing just ensures that this type of abuse will continue.
Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s Statement Re: Alleged Action of Suspension for Possession of Kombucha Tea Drink
For Immediate Release: Friday, October 12, 2012
Newport-Mesa Unified would like to respond to a recent article posted in The Healthy Home Economist titled, “Child Suspended from School for Kombucha in Lunchbox.”
No disciplinary action was taken and the student was not suspended. The parents of the involved student met with the school principal to discuss and resolve any issues that resulted from Wednesday’s incident.
The issue resulted from the student being in possession of a beverage called, Kombucha, a tea, which states on its label that it contains 0.05 percent alcohol. The substance came to the attention of school officials through other students who reported that a student had alcohol. Having a substance on campus containing any level of alcoholic content is a violation according to District policy.
The article also references police involvement. The Newport Beach Police Department provides two full- time School Resource Officers who work with our Newport Beach and Corona del Mar campuses. Police were not called in specifically for this incident. The SRO was already on campus and participated in a routine discovery process. All this being said, the incident itself and the perception of how it was handled is something the District is committed to correcting. School districts implement policies and procedures to ensure consistency of practice. For most circumstances, the practices work. However, this was a new situation.
Seeing the need to review some of the practices regarding policies and procedures regarding discipline, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of Education has requested the Superintendent to research programs that would emphasize a more nurturing approach to the discovery process and avoid overly aggressive practices when dealing with the discipline process.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
This is adding insult to injury. First they railroaded the kid, and then they deny that it ever happened.
It is time to go for the jugular now, as the school has clearly done to the kid. Someone needs to drag these scumbags into a court and law and let the public see how grossly the kid and the parents’ rights have been violated AND how egregiously that press release mischaracterized and misrepresented what has transpired.
They cannot do what they did AND have the final say on what they did. It is high time to set the record straight and teach the perpetrators a lesson so hard they will never forget it. Otherwise you can bet your kombucha farm that something similar is going to happen again.
Courts are corrupted. You will receive no help from courts. They are part of the corporation that runs this colony (united states). Courts, schools, police, politicians … all part of the corporation owned by the Virginia Company, which is owned by royal family.
People must take care of their own business and not look to the corporation for help because its agenda is to cull population.
See Agenda 21, Charlotte Iserbyt, John Taylor Gatto, Brian Gerrish.
I think the school’s response was foolish because it’s not truthful; it makes them look like total liars. If they detained the kid all day, questioned him, made him sign a suspension notice (all without the parents?) then disciplinary action was taken and the kid was probably traumatized too. They should own up to exactly what they did, for starters, and then they should apologize for that without trying to deny any of it. Their lack of openness and honesty is just plain stupid.
Of course they should have called the parents first, and the parents should have been there in the principal’s office if the kid was questioned. Browbeating a child because of what his parent put in his lunchbox is inappropriate and bullying.
Finally, do these idiots understand math at all? Don’t they realize that there is no significant amount of alcohol in that Kombucha? They are supposed to be educators but they don’t seem to have thought about the arithmetic at all. An extreme over-reaction.
Judith, you make all the right points. Basically, you’ve said it all!
While I agree with much of what you wrote, I disagree about “extreme over-reaction”. These teachers, administrators and police are “change agents.” (see Charlotte Iserbyt for 40+ years of whistleblowing research into schools).
The job of these change agents is to target intelligent, well-adjusted (mostly) male children for drugs, humiliation and bullying. They are taking the best of the boys and trying to neuter them to avoid leadership coming from the ranks of the proletariat.
Any sign of significant positive parenting (such as packing nutritious lunches instead of eating GMO slop served in schools) causes these change agents to step into high gear. You can see it over and over in the news. Story after story about schools abusing children like this.
This is not an unusual story. It happens all over. It’s an agenda and it’s in effect. And if your children are in “schools” they are right in the line of fire.
Sarah- So cool to see your article over on Alex Jones’ website!
Thanks Susan 🙂 It was a thrill to be the story behind one of his headlines for sure!!
your article does not appear at infowars anymore. they are not allowing comments either. I’ve posted your article over there also asking why the article was removed.
they don’t want this viral which is what will happen if it remains on infowars.
thank you for posting this article.
Does that mean that the hand sanitizer that schools use are also removed from campus because of alcohol content?
L – That is an excellent point! In my son’s elementary school, they are required to buy a bottle of hand sanitizer to keep in the classroom. I told my son I would not buy it and he was not allowed to use it in school. I know that the school would look at me like I was crazy if they knew my opinion on this, so I kept quiet about it. I told my son to tell his teacher to talk to me if she notices he is not using it or tells him to use it. He knows to refuse. He gets the whole “chemical thing” and also does not want to use it. It was a teachable moment to explain to him about beneficial bacteria as well. He is 7 and he understands it all. When things like this (the kombucha story) happen, (like pretty much everything in school nowadays) it is a good time to show the kids how messed up these institutions are. We are homeschoolers, but my son is in school temporarily (long, private story here). School – ha ha! What a joke it is. Even worse, it’s a prison and robot training program. Now, I can say that as an insider, not just a homeschooler. Take your kids out if you can. I am a single mother, working for myself, just scrapping by AND I buy expensive raw butter for my kid. When there’s a will, there’s a way.
By the way, I heard about a baby (or a toddler) who died after licking the hand sanitizer off of his or her hands. It’s all over the place in schools!
Hand sanitizer isn’t an ingested commodity so it likely falls into a different category. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be allowed on school grounds, but I guess the fact that it contains alcohol was completely off their radar.
Well, their press release says “Having a substance on campus containing any level of alcoholic content is a violation according to District policy” so that would mean hand sanitizers as well.
The first thing the school SHOULD have done was contact the parent(s), not the police officers (whether they were “already on the grounds” or not – that’s immaterial, highly). Parents should have been notified before another WORD was spoken to or in front of that child. Our entire gestapo based school system needs a good shake-down by the citizenry of each and every hamlet, town and city – the citizens, not some attorney. Do parents even know what “school policy” means? Do they get a copy every year of the school rules and regulations? I know we didn’t when my kids were in school, but then schools were for humans back then, not for little robots.
I wonder if sending a pickle in a lunch box is legal? After all, it’s a fermented food and the educators at this institution don’t seem to understand the term. How sad. Who is teaching who here?
Sarah, kudos to you! Just keep it up! Keep on doing what you do – it is ALL GOOD. And thank you for speaking up on this family’s behalf.
This is absolutely ridiculous did any one look this up and see what it was made of it is a herbal thing made of sea weed and mushroom some thing that is good for you. You can buy this from any health food store all ready made. Leave it to our government to take some thing so little so far. If I were the parents I would sue the hell out of the school board for this unjust act. Who knows pretty soon our kids schools will be like prisons it is sad where we are heading in this world today.
If they would check the ingredients on the orange juice they give or sell in the cafeteria they would discover that the selfsame orange contains….05% alcohol!
I just have to wonder if anyone did the math on the alcohol content.
Coors Original = 5% alcohol. a single 12 oz can contains 0.6 oz alcohol
divide 0.6 by 0.0005 = 1200 oz
that is 150 cups or 9.375 gallons, or 75 lbs of the tea to equate to 1 can of beer.
This cannot be a dangerous amount of alcohol. Heck there is alcohol in all kinds of everyday things like bread (rye, sourdough, pumpernickel) and fruit juices.
Alcohol consumed at that rate is metabolized faster than it can have any effect.
The mental meals served up at public schools far worse than pink slime
How the heck do we end up having a “food police” in public schools!?!??!?!
Just makes me feel like 1984 or Nazi Germany. Awful.