By Katie Landan –
FOXNews.com
A Texas 3rd grader had to serve a one-week detention
after a teacher found a single Jolly Rancher candy in
her possession.
Ten-year-old Leighann Adair came home in tears,
terrified to tell her parents she’d been slapped with
a week’s worth of detention for possessing a
contraband substance:
The forbidden fruit: a piece of Jolly Rancher candy.
A teacher at Brazos Elementary School in Wallis, Texas, took the unopened piece of candy away from the third-grader two weeks ago after a friend handed it to her.
Both Leighann and her friend were ordered to serve detention during lunch and recess, and they had to
write an essay about what they did and why it was
wrong.
“She came home crying,” said her mother,
Amber Brazda, explaining that Leighann
“has never been in trouble before.”
“It’s an extreme punishment for something so small,”
said Leighann’s stepfather Michael Brazda.
“What are they going to do,
have candy sniffing dogs next?”
her mother said.
But school officials are standing by the punishment.
They say they have to be strict in order to enforce
their no-gum, no-candy policy. Candy and gum,
they say, can cause a mess.
Jack Ellis , superintendent for the Brazos Independent School District, says it’s also a matter of following
state guidelines to limit the amount of junk food in schools.
“Whether or not I agree with the guidelines,
we have to follow the rules,”
Ellis told KHOU-TV in Houston.
A piece of Jolly Ranchers candy has 23 calories
and provides 2 percent of the daily value of
carbohydrates. But there’s nothing in the rules
that compels a school to punish a student for
possessing junk food, says Texas Department
of Agriculture spokesman Bryan Black.
The department sent a letter to the school
reminding staff that state policy doesn’t outline
such punishments. “Our policy does not prohibit
from sharing a Jolly Rancher with a friend,”
Black told FOXNews.com.
“If a parent wants to pack candy, it’s their decision,
not against school policy.
A parent needs to decide what a student eats.”
Though the state has dietary rules for schools —
mandating, for example,
that food be baked, not fried — disciplinary action
is a local decision, Black told FOXNews.com.
And Leighann’s parents say the local decision
routinely goes too far.
“The school has a history of harsh punishments,”
Michael Brazda told FoxNews.com.
“It’s about time someone called them out on it.”
He said students at the school are required to
wear a belt, and a few months ago Leighann’s
brother was given in-house suspension for
failing to wear one –
even though the father said he called the school
secretary to explain that their new puppy chewed
up the boy’s only belt that morning.
He said his son had to “sit in a room all day and
stare at a wall.”
Leighann’s family and members of the community
plan to attend the next school board meeting to
contest the school’s stringent candy policy.
Though the family is trying to change the district’s patterns, the parents say they plan to take their
children out of the school district at the end of
the year.
“I will put her in a private school if I have to,”
Amber Brazda said.
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