School misses teachable moment

Truancy is not a civil liberty. That's one lesson of the walkout earlier this month by hundreds of Central Islip middle school students protesting proposed budget cuts.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, taking an expansive view of student rights, criticized the resulting daylong suspension of what it said was more than 100 kids.

But students belong in school -- which is why it was right to punish their walkout. Teenagers have no constitutional right to leave their classrooms whenever the spirit moves them, whether the issue is budget cuts or bologna sandwiches in the cafeteria. School is mandatory. There are lots of other times and places to exercise free speech.

But if the NYCLU was off base, so were school officials, who for some reason thought the best punishment for missing school was missing even more school. That's silly. The punishment should fit the crime, after all, not repeat it.

We can't help feeling that a teaching moment was missed here. Instead of being suspended, for example, perhaps students might have been kept after class to learn about the First Amendment and discuss how best to exercise their rights.

School officials should expunge the suspension from the students' records, since it involved political speech, however misplaced, rather than schoolyard fisticuffs. Then teachers should encourage kids to make their views known in better places, or at least at better times. hN