Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 25, 1993                   TAG: 9304250166
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SUFFOLK                                LENGTH: Medium

CHILD WHO TOOK TOY SWORD TO SCHOOL ALLOWED TO RETURN

School officials declined to discuss the case of Jason Sawyer, or to say whether he had been accused of violating the school system's policy that bars students from bringing look-alike weapons to class.

The boy's mother, Barbara, described the toy as a plastic sword the size of three postage stamps. "They told him that he was wrong and that he shouldn't have brought the toy," she said. "They didn't back down on that issue at all."

Jason was suspended Tuesday but was back in school Thursday. The school system's policy sets up an administrative hearing for students age 10 and younger. Children over 10 face expulsion.

Jason admitted showing the toy to friends while riding the bus to Driver Elementary School and believes a schoolmate told either a teacher or the principal, his mother said.

"It seems schools have changed a bit since I went to school," she said. "It used to be when a child brought a toy to school, it was just pulled and kept."

She said suspension is too harsh a punishment. "I think the idea is to keep kids in school and off the streets," she said.

In January, an 11-year-old student at Nansemond-Parkway Elementary School in Suffolk was expelled for bringing a toy gun to school. The gun was a 1\ -inch key-ring trinket bought out of a vending machine at a supermarket.

That student has been readmitted after attending the city's alternative school program.

Jason's mother said she forbids her son from taking any toy to school. "He would have been reprimanded anyway, if we had caught him taking the toy to school," she said.