Family Loses Appeal in Pop-Tart Gun Incident

The Anne Arundel County Board of Education has rejected an appeal filed by 9-year-old Josh Welch’s parents aimed at removing a suspension from the boy’s record after he chewed his breakfast into a shape resembling a gun.

Josh’s parents plan to appeal the disciplinary measure to the Maryland State Board of Education, according to Capital Gazette.

On March 1, 2013, school administrators at Park Elementary in Baltimore suspended Josh for classroom disruption.

The letter sent to Josh’s parents by assistant principal Myrna Phillips said Josh had “used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class.”

Josh, 7 at the time, had nibbled his Pop-Tart into what the teacher interpreted as a gun. He was suspended for two days.

But Josh and his father, B.J. Welch, said he was making a mountain out of his Pop-Tart and not a gun.

A hearing was held in April for the boy who has become a national symbol for gun rights advocates. Josh’s family sought to clear his school record after he was suspended over the Pop-Tart gun incident.

Afterward, politicians scrambled to his cause, and one even gave him a lifetime membership to the NRA.

According to the Post, hearing officer Andrew W. Nussbaum wrote: “As much as the parents want this case to be about a ‘gun,’ it is, rather, a case about classroom disruption from a student who has had a long history of disruptive behavior and for whom the school had attempted a list of other strategies and interventions before resorting to a suspension.”

Nussbaum wrote that he was convinced that “had the student chewed his cereal bar into the shape of a cat and ran around the room, disrupting the classroom and making ‘meow’ cat sounds, the result would have been exactly the same.”

But Josh’s father says he had not heard anything about his son disrupting the class prior to the Pop-Tart gun incident.

“I don’t think he was suspended because he was being rowdy. I think he was suspended because of the sensitive nature of the topic,” Welch said.

In June, Josh’s family failed to have the suspension removed from his school record.

In October, the Anne Arundel County Board of Education wrote an opinion stating the staff at Park Elementary School “acted reasonably and properly” for suspending Josh, the Capital Gazette reports.

Robin Ficker, the attorney for Josh and his family, says they will now appeal to the Maryland State Board of Education to have the suspension cleared from Josh’s record.

>>Josh Welch was suspended after nibbling his breakfast into a Pop-Tart gun and disrupting the classroom. Photo Credit: Screenshot from WJLA.

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