The most toxic threat to the health and safety of schoolkids isn’t obesity, computer games, stepfathers or firearms.
Educrats think your precious children are in grave danger at the paws of Hello Kitty — the cloying, pink-and-white character adorning a million girls’ lunchboxes, backpacks and bubble blowers.
Believe it.
A contagious hysteria overtook schools beginning in January, a month after psycho Adam Lanza massacred 26 souls at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Spooked Bronx elementary school PS 4 was locked down for an hour and change after an administrator heard a “rumor” that a boy came to school carrying a weapon.
It was a Nerf gun. The kind that flings harmless foam pellets, gently, into the air.
It was immediately obvious to any toy lover that the risk of injury by Nerf was not just overblown, but nonexistent. But the school system’s zero-tolerance policy against guns went into hyper-drive. Some parents yanked kids from class. The 12-year-old boy who owned the Nerf gun wasn’t arrested.
He got a stern warning.
A 5-year-old Pennsylvania kindergartner was not so lucky.
Standing on a bus line, she was overheard by an overzealous adult chatting about the superiority of the Hello Kitty bubble “gun” to the princess bubble blower.
The child said (allegedly), “I’ll shoot you, you shoot me, and we’ll all play together.”
There was no evidence the baby was carrying a Kitty.
Still, the tyke was suspended 10 days — for making a “terrorist threat.” She was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. No telling if her right to milk and cookies was revoked.
The suspension was reduced from 10 days to two. Now the child’s permanent record makes her out to be a potential “terrorist” — Khalid Sheik Mohammed, without the beard.
Today, a committee set up by Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy puts out its controversial first recommendations for gun control in the wake of Sandy Hook. Gun-haters will feel better. But Second Amendment types maintain laws on the books aren’t being enforced. They have a point.
And as long as educrats nationwide freak out over idiocies, such as kids pointing fingers and yelling, “Bang!’’ real threats go ignored.
This month, officials at a Michigan elementary school impounded a third-grade boy’s 30 homemade birthday cupcakes because they were decorated with green plastic figures in the shape of World War II soldiers. The principal said the armed toys were “insensitive” after Sandy Hook.
“It disgusted me,’’ the boy’s father, Casey Fountain, told Fox News. “It’s vile they lump true American heroes with psychopathic killers.”
Educators, who should be increasing security, lull themselves into the belief that they’re keeping kids safe. A Philadelphia girl was searched in front of her class after carrying a paper gun her grandfather made for her. Six-year-old Naomi McKinney of South Carolina was expelled from kindergarten after bringing to school a toy gun made of clear plastic. An official sent a letter home saying she’d be “subject to the criminal charge of trespassing” if she entered school grounds.
“She cannot even be in my vehicle when I go to pick up my other children,” her mom told a local paper.
And this: A Baltimore boy was suspended two days after his teacher thought he bit . . . a strawberry toaster pastry into the shape of a gun! The boy said he bit the strudel into the shape of a “mountain.”
Manhattan mom of two Susan Levine worries that her boys’ favorite game of cops-and-robbers will result in punishment, expulsion and psychological torment.
“They are forbidden from being boys,” she told me.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recently said policies mandating the suspension of kids armed with fingers and toys was “drastic.” But there’s no turning back.
A 6-year-old first-grader, Noah Aguirre of Oregon, this month was suspended for half a day for talking about — not pulling out — a Nerf gun. The kid “doesn’t know what’s going on,” said his dad, Mike.
Pinhead educators act in the misguided belief that they’re keeping schools safe.
It won’t work.
Bratty Bieber hits a Lo point
Is Justin Bieber turning into Lindsay Lohan?
On his disastrous London tour, the squeaky-voiced Canadian popster hurled F-bombs at a photographer, showed up for a concert two hours late, walked off stage during a show to suck oxygen, then wound up in a hospital. From his bed, he tweeted a picture of his shirtless self.
The antics of the peculiar, pint-size prince, at the ripe age of 19, led to rumors that the Biebs was headed to rehab, like Linz.
So Bieber last week unleashed a tirade, ranting about the press and saying in a now-deleted sentence on Instagram: “to those comparing me to Lindsey [sic] Lohan look at her 2012 tax statements.”
Get a grip, cupcake.
Bieber is one meltdown away from uttering these words professionally: “You want fries with that?’’
Re-victimizing the victims
Talk about maiming the victim.
Women — and it’s mostly women — who report domestic violence risk being locked up under a new NYPD rule guaranteed to leave more ladies pummeled.
A March 5 memo from Chief of Detectives Phil Pulaski instructs cops to look at open warrants — including traffic tickets — of both the alleged abuser and the alleged victim.
A vulnerable mom could be jailed for lousy driving skills.
“You’re arresting the victim? That’s crazy,’’ matrimonial lawyer Marilyn Chinitz said. “You’re endangering children.’’
A police source told The Post that the jail threat would be used to coerce a woman if she tried to drop the charges against her tormentor. I say it will stop women from reporting beatings.
Dump this nutty rule.
Will Weiner rise?
Anthony Weiner is tanned, rested and standing stiffly at attention.
The ex-congressman, who lost his career and his front-runner status as mayor wannabe — but kept his wife — has been busy. The delusional Democrat, who tweeted pictures of his excited manhood to a bevy of babes, spent $106,500 this month on two polls, apparently to find out if he has a political future, campaign filings reveal.
So far, Weiner has made no move to throw his hat, or other articles of clothing, into the ring. He has time.
Donate your money to charity, Anthony, and hide the newspapers from your kid. This city doesn’t need an icky sex addict.
Say ‘The End’ to this principal
Kids of The Bronx deserve better.
Anissa Chalmers, principal of ultraviolent PS 132, moonlights as a B-movie actress. She deals drugs, rapes, murders and spews “F’’ and “N’’ words as death-row inmate “Queen V’’ in the 2009 flick “Gang Girl.’’
Last year, an 8-year-old boy slashed a 9-year-old in the neck with a razor at the chaotic school, where Chalmers pulls down a yearly salary of $129,920.
The Department of Ed. should dump this fool.