We’ve all become accustomed to the stupidity of “zero-tolerance” policies that leave no possibility of exercising intelligent discretion to educators — not that they seem very interested in having such a power, because then they wouldn’t be able to pass the buck back to the school board in sensitive cases like this. It’s so much easier to have a strict-liability rule that if you strike another person you will be punished, irrespective of context or motive or considerations of simple decency.

I'm OK with Z-tol policies as long as we get to reduce the pay of the folks that administer the policies to what you would expect to pay folks in a position where you aren't expected to exercise judgment as part of the job.