Without rules, assistant principals would just be ordinary men with sexuality issues.

One might think that people, even school officials, in Austin, Texas would have some feeling for the men and women “in harm’s way” over in Iraq.  But you can’t count on Texans anymore.  And this isn’t Dallas, it’s Austin, for God’s sake.

From this AOL report,

Master Sgt. Morris Hill is serving his country in Iraq, a long way away from his beloved sons back in Texas. Luckily, these days, we have the means for people on opposite sides of the planet to talk to each other in real time, almost without regard to where they actually are. We have cell phones.

Unfortunately, the only time Hill could call his son Brandon was during the school day — a time when students are generally forbidden from using their cell phones. It would seem, however, that this situation would count as extraordinary circumstances and an exception could be made, but administrators disagree. Brandon was suspended for taking the call.

The good news is that he wasn’t tased, which may well have happened if Brandon lived in Vancouver.  But then, he father wouldn’t have been Iraq, either.

It would be slightly more understandable if this telephone call came as a surprise, a “shock” if you will.  But Master Sgt. Hill is not the sort of fella to leave things to chance, and made arrangements.

The odd part is that the father had apparently made an arrangement in advance with the assistant principal to allow his sons to receive calls from him. “He had spoken with Mr. Fletcher,” said Pat Hill, the boys’ mother. “He thought there was an agreement understood that if he called either Joshua or Brandon at school, that everything was fine.”

Fletcher, eh?  Wasn’t she the nurse in One flew over the cuckoo’s nest?

So now that all the stupid posturing is over, the brain trust at the school naturally rescinded the suspension, let Brandon back in school and apologized publicly for having a calligyian cortex, right?  Not in Texas, amigos.

Mrs. Hill is trying to get the suspension removed from her son’s record, but the school says the matter is closed.

And what does the school superintendent have to say about this?

In a written statement to KXAN Austin News, Kathy Blake, the secretary to the Copperas Cove district superintendent, said: “In an emergency situation there are procedures in place to address those individual situations. This is true for all of the students in our district. The incident in question occurred almost two weeks ago and has been resolved.”

This is priceless.  Not merely because the school’s statement to the media comes from the secretary, but it was a written statement, meaning that they can’t even use the excuse that the Super wasn’t available at the moment the call came in.  They had all the time in the world and actually chose to have the secretary respond.

What, was the school district’s grocery clerk on vacation?  

Hey criminal defense blawger Jamie Spencer, is this how you guys run your schools down there, keeping kids from talking to their Dads who are in Iraq and could become a statistic at any moment?  Know any good lawyers down there?  I’m pretty sure this is too much of a stretch for Norm to handle.