School Forces Girl in Wet Swimsuit to Stand Outside in Sub-Zero Weather

Legalism has gotten a 14-year-old girl a case of frostbite.

The trouble began when a small science experiment triggered the fire alarm at Como Park Senior High School in St. Paul, Minnesota. Fourteen-year-old Kayona Hagen-Tietz was swimming in the school pool for health class at the time. Her clothes were in her locker, and a teacher told her that there was no time for her to change. Hagen-Tietz was rushed outside–still wet and dressed in only swimsuit.

It was 5 degrees below zero in St. Paul that day. With the windchill, it was 25 degrees below zero.

Hagen-Tietz asked to wait inside an employee’s car, or at the elementary school across the street. But administrators believed that this would violate official policy, and could get the school in trouble, so they opted to simply let the girl freeze.

Her fellow classmates, at least, huddled around her to try to keep her warm. And one teacher did eventually lend her a coat.

At the risk of sounding like a dubstep repeat sequence, everyone involved with this who works in the school system needs to be fired. They literally endangered a student’s life, because they have had their brains shoehorned into narrow legalistic modes of behavior. They shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near kids, and criminal prosecution should be considered. No more fooling around with this idiocy.

Between this and the numerous cases of little kids suspended from school for making a gun with their fingers, going pow-pow, drawing a firearm or even wearing a shirt that mentions Second Amendment rights, our educational system has been unionized and overlawyered right out of common sense.

Here’s a radical set of proposals: Kick the unions permanently out of all public education, fire at least half the administrative staffs in every school system, cut excessive superintendent salaries, stop schools from building ridiculous sports palaces, and let those who do remain in the system think.